
Class _ 

Book 

Copyright^?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIC 



MORE POWER 
TO YOU 



FIFTY EDITORIALS 
FROM EVERY WEEK 

BY 

BRUCE BARTON 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1917 



3 J" \(o 

13 



Copyright, 1917, by 
The Century Co. 



Copyright, 1915, 1916, 1917, by 
Every Week Corporation 



Published September, 1917 



AUG 30 1917 



)CU470l 



J>- 



To come down to the office in the morn- 
ing and find letters from friends whom one 
has never seen, but who prove by their 
letters how very real is their friendship — 

To have the privilege of visiting in the 
homes of hundreds of thousands such 
friends every week, and saying frankly 
whatever happens to be on one's mind, 
with no fear of being misunderstood — 

This is almost more wealth than any one 
man ought to enjoy. 

I am very grateful. I wish I could 
say it more convincingly — so convincingly 
that every one of the readers of " Every 
Week " might feel that to him, or to her, 
personally, I have dedicated this little 
book. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I " No Room in the Inn "..-.. 3 

/ II The Fable of a Certain King Who 

/ 

Sought a New Pleasure ... 6 

III Your Body May Live in a Cellar; 

but It's Your Own Fault if Your 
Mind Lives There 11 

IV Cut Down Your Necessities and 
You Will Be Able to Afford a 
Few Luxuries 16 

V Do You Bore Yourself? .... 20 

VI About Making Money 25 

VII Should We Be Sent to Jail for 
Eating the Wrong Food? ... 29 

VIII Do You Live in a Home or Only in 

a House? . . 33 

IX Being a Real Producer .... 36 

X Perhaps You Don't Dream Enough 39 

^'XI A Lesson from Luigi 44 

XII I Would if He Were My Boy . . 48 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII Music Is not Merely Entertain- 

ment: It Is also Medicine ... 52 

XIV A Few Kind Words for Business . 57 

XV Some Poor Blind Folk Have Never 

Seen a Miracle 62 

XVI I Reassure a Mother 66 

XVII If You Want to Know Whether 
Your Brain Is Flabby, Feel of 
Your Legs . 70 

XVIII Do Babies Like You? That's a 

Pretty Good Test . . . . .74 

XIX Now Will You Stop That Sunday 

Work? 78 

XX Ask Any Successful Man ... 82 

XXI If You Can Give Your Son Only 

One Gift, Let It Be Enthusiasm 86 

XXII Have You Ceased to Study? If so, 

Good Night 90 

XXIII A Man Asks, "What Is Your Fav- 

orite Book? " 94 

XXIV This Hoary-Headed Falsehood Has 

Lived Long Enough 99 

XXV In Appreciation of Mothers . . .103 
XXVI The Lesson of a Failure .... 108 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVII When a Boy Knows More Than His 

Father m 

XXVIII Building Materials for Castles in 

Spain Have not Advanced at All 116 

XXIX Too Many Men Still Believe in 

Perpetual Motion 121 

XXX Your Own Little Bed Is Your Best 

M. D 126 

XXXI There Is a Great Deal of Encour- 
agement in History for Most of 
Us . 131 

XXXII You Should not Worry . . . .135 

XXXIII Thoughts on Lying on My Back and 

Reading a Seed Catalogue . . .138 

XXXIV On Taking My Old Fishing-Pole 

out of Winter Storage . . . 143 

XXXV It's a Good Old World if You Know 

How to Breathe 14.8 

XXXVI Wm. Hohenzollern, Lock Box i, 

Berlin 153 

XXXVII Generally Speaking, a Job Is Good 
in Proportion to the Amount of 
Study Required to Master It . .158 

XXXVIII The Times that Try Men's Souls . 163 

XXXIX " Therewith to Be Content " . .167 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XL "The Business ... Is Undra- 

matic" 171 

XLI Some Men Lose Five Minutes Early 
in Life and Never Find It After- 
ward 176 

XLII The Immortality of Influence . .181 

XLIII Some Day Your Employer Will 
Want to Know Why You Do not 
Play More 186 

XLIV A Letter to a Young Man Who 

Wants a Better Job . . . .190 

XLV If You Were to Write Your Own 
Epitaph, What Could You Hon- 
estly Say? 195 

XLVI If You Want' to Know How Much 
You Ought to Get, Find Out How 
Much You Have to Give . . .199 

XLVII Does Your Respect for Folks Grow 

Greater or Less as You Go Along 204 






\ 



XLVIII Of Course There Is a Santa Claus 209 

XLIX "I Dread the End of the Year" . 213 

L "If a Man Die, Shall He Live 

Again? " 217 



MORE POWER 
TO YOU 



MORE POWER TO YOU 



" NO ROOM IN THE INN " 

DID you ever stop to think of the tra- 
gedy of the little hotel at Bethlehem 
in Palestine — the " inn " ? 

The parents of Jesus of Nazareth 
knocked at its doors, and could not come 
in. It might have sheltered the greatest 
event in the history of the world = — and 
it lost the chance. 

Why? Why was Jesus of Nazareth 
born in a stable? Because the people at 
the inn were vicious or hostile? Not at 
all. But the inn was full — every room 
was occupied by people who had money 
to pay and so must be served — it was full 
of Business. 

There was " no room in the inn." 



4 More Power to You 

I know men whose lives are like that 
inn. 

" Arnold's heart is broken," said one 
man to another recently; " his son is a 
failure and a fool." 

II What can you expect?" the other an- 
swered. " Arnold has not given his boy 
a minute's time for ten years." 

Arnold thinks he is a good father: he 
has often told his friends that he is work- 
ing night and day in Business for his wife 
and boy. 

As a matter of fact, his Business is 
working him. There is no room in his 
life for anything else. And his son is a 
fool. 

" You had quite a taste for literature 
when you left college, didn't you?" I 
asked another man. 

" Oh, yes," he answered sadly; " but I 
had to give all that up. A man can't be 
in Business and find room for anything 
else." 

II I hear Simpson's wife has left him," 
I heard a third man say; and his compan- 
ion replied: 



"No Room in the Inn" 5 

" She got tired spending her evenings 
alone, probably. You know, Simpson al- 
ways says Business comes first." 

In a little village church-yard in Eng- 
land there is this inscription: 

Here lies Peter Bacon, born a man and 
died a grocer. 

Take care that it be not written over 
you, " Born a man and died a Business 
man." Make good; but do not sacrifice, 
in making good, the gifts of life that are 
best. 

Take care to have time for something 
besides Business — for your family, for 
good books, for an occasional hour when 
you merely walk under the stars and think. 

For in Bethlehem, two thousand years 
ago, there stood a little inn. And behold, 
it was so full of Business that the great- 
est event in the world knocked at its doors 
and could not come in. 



II 



THE FABLE OF A CERTAIN KING WHO 
SOUGHT A NEW PLEASURE 

NOW, in a great country there lived a 
certain King who ruled over vast 
possessions. 

He had one daughter, a beautiful 
princess. 

And behold, though the King possessed 
everything that money could buy,— 
houses and lands and cattle and servants 
and automobiles, — he was weary of life. 
For he said, There is no pleasure in it. 

And he wrote a proclamation, and 
caused it to be published in his dominions, 
that whoever would invent a new pleasure 
for his amusement should receive the hand 
of his daughter in marriage. 

Thereupon appeared a young man who 
bowed low and said: " O King, live for- 
6 



The Fable of a King 7 

ever. I have invented a new pleasure; 
but to enjoy it you must do precisely as I 
say." 

Whereupon the King's heart was very 
glad. He smiled upon the young man 
and promised. 

The next morning the young man was 
early at the palace, and had the King out 
of bed before daybreak, and the princess 
and all the little princes. 

Together they journeyed a long way by 
foot and street-car into the country. 
They saw a wonderful sight in the sky, 
and the young man explained to the King 
that it was called a sunrise. They passed 
brooks, and the princes took off their 
shoes and stockings and waded in them. 
They wandered through cool woods and 
picked flowers. 

Finally, at about the middle of the day, 
the King said: " I have a strange feeling 
under my belt which I have never felt be- 
fore." 

And the young man answered and said: 
" That, your Majesty, is called hunger. 
You have never had it because you never 



8 More Power to You 

got enough fresh air into your system be- 
fore to create it." 

And the little princes, too, began to 
cry out that they also had queer feelings 
under their belts. 

Whereupon the young man produced a 
large basket covered with a white cloth, 
and opened it. And behold, there were 
sandwiches, and fruits, and olives, and 
cold chicken, and coffee in a tin bucket, 
and cake, and divers other foods, all 
daintily packed. 

And the King could not restrain his 
hand, but dove in and ate for half an hour 
or more; and then lay under the trees and 
looked up at the sky and smoked. 

And the princes raced about the woods 
and played Indian, and no one watched 
over them or bade them nay; for there 
was nothing they could possibly harm. 

And toward nightfall they journeyed 
back to the palace; and the little princes, 
who had always to be pampered and read 
to at night to get them to sleep, fell asleep 
on their beds with their clothes on. 

And the King, having had a bath and a 



The Fable of a King 9 

rub-down, settled back on the royal piazza 
with a fifty-cent cigar in his mouth, and 
smiled for the first time in months, and 
called for the young man. 

And the young man appeared and said: 
" Your Majesty, it was some day, was it 
not? " And the King admitted that it was. 

" Thou hast made good," saith the 
King, " and my daughter, the beautiful 
princess, is inside at the piano. But, first, 
give me the bill for this wonderful new 
pleasure; for I will pay for it." 

And the young man handed him a bill 
for one dollar and twenty-three cents. 

Whereupon the King was exceeding 
wroth, and cried out: " Dost think I am 
a cheap skate? Is a pleasure that costs 
only one dollar and twenty-three fit for a 
king?" 

And he called the Captain of the Guard 
and ordered that the young man should 
be shot at sunrise. 

Moral: You and I had some bully 
times, when we were kids, on those old 
picnics with sandwiches that the ants 



io More Power to You 

crawled over and coffee full of pine 
needles. But we would n't dare take our 
kids on a picnic — perish the thought ! 
The neighbors would think we were cheap 
skates. 

Pack up the dinner-coat, mother. 
We 're off to Atlantic City with the year's 
savings. 



Ill 



YOUR BODY MAY LIVE IN A CELLAR; BUT 

IT 'S YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOUR 

MIND LIVES THERE 

THE other night my friend Ferrero 
and I spent a few years with Julius 
Caesar in ancient Rome. 

We went with him on his campaigns in 
Gaul. Those were wonderful battles — 
wonderful fighters. 

From a hill-top we could watch the 
whole battle — thousands of men driving 
at each other with their swords, hurling 
their javelins at short range. No smoke, 
no trenches; just primitive, hand-to-hand 
conflict. 

We came back to Rome. The city was 
in a turmoil. Our great chariots thun- 
dered through the streets in triumph; our 
captives, our spoils, our banners made 
a magnificent procession. The crowds 

cheered wildly. 

ii 



12 More Power to You 

Another evening my friend Green and 
I had a great time together in ancient 
Britain. 

We went down to Runnymede with a 
group of English nobles. They were 
powerful men, each a petty king in his 
own section; but every one of them took 
his life in his hand on that expedition. 

And there we gathered around King 
John, and forced him, against his will, to 
put his name to the Magna Charta, the 
Great Charter which is the foundation of 
English liberties — and our own. 

I had a fine time with Napoleon a few 
nights before. 

I met him when he landed in France, 
after the escape from Elba. 

Up through the southern provinces he 
came, gathering a few troops there, win- 
ning over by the force of his eloquence 
the regiments sent to capture him. 

We arrived in Paris. Hurriedly, but 
with supreme confidence that the Little 
Corporal could never fail, we got together 
a makeshift army and set out to strike the 
winning blow at Waterloo. 



Your Mind 13 

That battle — I shall never forget it. 

Another day I went over to old Con- 
cord, and spent the whole afternoon with 
Emerson. 

We talked about Representative Men. 

Well, well, you say, what foolishness is 
this? What do you mean by saying you 
lived with Caesar and Napoleon and Em- 
erson — all centuries apart, all long since 
dead? 

If you do not know what I mean, then I 
pity you. 

Have you never come home tired from 
your office, and with a book transported 
your foolish little mind clear out of the 
present day? 

Have you never learned the joy of sur- 
rendering yourself to the companionship 
of the great men of the past? 

Have you never sat in the little London 
Club and heard Sam Johnson thunder his 
philosophy of life? 

Have you never sailed up and down 
the American coast with Captain John 
Smith, dodging the Indians and opening up 
a new continent? 



14 More Power to You 

Are you one of the wretched, poverty- 
stricken souls who have never learned to 
escape from yourself through the blessed 
magic of good books? 

Have you contented yourself all your 
life with the companionship of good 
pinochle-players, when you might have 
been a familiar friend of Socrates and 
Milton and Napoleon and Cromwell and 
Washington and Columbus and Shake- 
speare and Lincoln and Rousseau? 

If so, cut out this paragraph from a 
great man and paste it in your hat: 

/ would rather be a beggar, and dwell 
in a garret, than a king who did not love 
books. 

There are some marvelous experiences 
coming to you. 

You can in the evenings to come jar 
yourself out of the petty rut where circum- 
stance has placed you, and become a fa- 
miliar of the immortals. 

You may learn to face the world with a 
new confidence, a new poise, a new self- 
respect, because you have made yourself a 
citizen of the ages. 



Your Mind 15 

Do some real reading. 

Do it for the joy it will give you: do it 
for the good it will do you. 

" Show me a family of readers/' said 
Napoleon, " and I will show you the 
people who rule the world." 



IV 



CUT DOWN YOUR NECESSITIES, AND YOU 

WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD A 

FEW LUXURIES 

MOST of us do not have incomes 
large enough to provide both the 
things we need and the things we want. 

We are forced to choose between our 
necessities and our luxuries. 

And, very foolishly, we choose to offer 
up the luxuries. 

Thus our existence becomes dull and 
monotonous. 

We can hardly be said really to live: 
our lives are lived for us — cut out and 
sewed together by the habits and customs 
of the class to which we belong. 

I have established a very good rule, 
which I pass on to you : Never do any* 
thing just because other people do it. 

Most of your friends live in city apart- 
16 



Cut Down Your Necessities 17 

ments. They pay so much for the use of 
their rooms, and twice as much for the 
location and the fine marble hallway. 

To live in an apartment like theirs is 
one of your " necessities." 

If you cut out that necessity, and lived 
in the country or in an apartment where 
you had to stretch your legs up three flights 
of stairs, you would have some money to 
spend on luxuries. 

So with many other things. 

Every year, by cutting out a few foolish 
necessities, I buy myself one big, wise 
luxury. 

Four years ago I bought an automobile. 

Not much of an automobile. Many of 
my friends said they would rather not have 
any automobile than to have one like mine. 
But it was an automobile. 

It has done some wonderful things for 
me. 

For one thing, it has given me my little 
summer place up in the country. 

A modest old white Colonial house, with 
a brook running behind it, and fruit trees 
all around — a place I had wanted for 



18 More Power to You 

years, but could not have — because it was 
two miles from the railroad. 

But two miles is nothing, even to an 
automobile like mine. 

So I can work in the city and play all 
summer in the country — thanks to my 
automobile. 

It has done some other good things for 
me. It has improved the country roads 
between my little white house and town. 
Before the automobiles began to go by, the 
roads were very rough. But now all across 
the country-side mud puddles and deep 
ruts have vanished as if by magic. The 
automobile has made the town " dress up." 

And it has made me " dress up " my 
place, also. 

Have you ever noticed how many more 
flowers are planted around farm-houses 
than formerly were? Do you want to 
know why that is? I will tell you. 

It used to make me mad because people 
who whirled by my place in limousines 
never stopped to look around. " I '11 
make them turn their proud heads, " I said. 
So I planted flowers and painted my house. 



Cut Down Your Necessities 19 

Now, on Sunday afternoons, I lie in the 
hammock on my porch and listen to 
people in the cars saying to each other: 
11 What a pretty little place that is! I 
wonder who lives there? " 

That 's why there are more flowers than 
there used to be — - the automobile has 
done that. 

With a tin pail full of coffee and a 
basket of sandwiches, I have had more fun 
exploring the wood roads around my place 
than Columbus ever had in discovering 
America. 

My automobile has brought my office 
and my little white house side by side. It 
has given me a new pride in my place. It 
has improved the roads around me. 

Yes, and it has made me a good neigh- 
bor to people whom I have wanted to call 
on for years, and never brought myself to 
it, because I hate long, hot rides on the 
street cars. It has made me a better citi- 
zen all around. 

Gasoline is very high this year. 

I shall have to cut out some other fool- 
ish necessity. 



V 

DO YOU BORE YOURSELF? 

RIDING on a train the other day, 
I got to watching a man whose con- 
dition was really pathetic. 

He had forgotten to bring a book or a 
magazine; there was no one in the car with 
whom he could talk. For one of the few 
times in his life, he was utterly alone in 
the world: and he was utterly miserable. 

Cast on his own resources, he discov- 
ered that there were inside of him no 
reservoirs of thought or interest where 
his dusty soul might be refreshed. 

He was thrown unexpectedly into his 
own company, and he bored himself 
terribly. 

His was not an exceptional case : on the 
contrary, he was rather typical of the 
ordinary modern man. 

In olden days, when towns were more 
scattered, distances greater, and life less 

20 



Do You Bore Yourself? 21 

complex, men were accustomed to be 
alone for hours and even days, and could 
stand it. 

The modern man must be talking, or he 
must be reading, or he must be playing: 
anything lest by accident he be left alone 
for a little time and compelled to think. 

" The world," as Wordsworth said, " is 
too much with us." 

I would not have any man unsocial. 
He who withdraws himself from his fel- 
low men lessens his service and impover- 
ishes his life, no matter what work of art 
may come out of his solitude. 

But it would do the world good if every 
man in it would compel himself occasion- 
ally to be absolutely alone. 

Away from people, who blunt the edges 
of his personality: away from books and 
magazines, which give him his thinking 
pre-digested: away on a long walk, where 
he could face the world with a naked mind 
and compel himself to think some things 
through by himself. 

Most of the world's progress has come 
out of periods of such loneliness. 



22 More Power to You 

Moses was a social being, a political 
leader, whose success was in his power to 
handle an unruly crowd. 

But Moses' great contribution to the 
world — the Ten Commandments — 
came down from the mountain-top where 
he had climbed alone. 

It was out of the silence that Samuel's 
call came; and Mohammed's; and Joan of 
Arc's. 

To Lincoln, poor struggling lawyer, 
there once came an offer from a great rail- 
road to become its general counsel at 
$10,000 a year. 

He did not seek advice, though friends 
offered it freely. One day he appeared at 
his office an hour later than usual, and 
announced that he had made his de- 
cision. 

He had risen early and walked out to 
the little grove on the edge of Springfield 
where most of his decisions were made, 
and there had wrestled the thing out 
alone. 

John C. Calhoun once told a friend that 
he " had early subjected his mind to such 






Do You Bore Yourself?, 23 

a rigid course of discipline, and had per- 
sisted without faltering until he had ac- 
quired a perfect control over it; that he 
could now confine it to any subject as long 
as he pleased without wandering even for 
a moment; that it was his habit, when he 
set out alone for a walk or a ride, to select 
a subject for reflection, and that he never 
suffered his attention to wander from it 
until he was satisfied with its exam- 
ination." 

11 How do you wish to be shaved, sir? " 
Daniel Webster's barber once asked 
him. 

To which the great man replied: " In 
silence, sir." 

There is no great success without con- 
centration: and no concentration in minds 
that have not been disciplined to long- 
continued, self-reliant thought. 

Store your mind with thoughts worth 
while: be independent of the world of 
chatter — yes, even occasionally of the 
world of books. For in this lies the secret 
of a virile personality — and the key to 
contentment. 



1\ More Power to You 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

Wise men stock their heaven with 
good things, and carry it always with 
them. 



VI 

ABOUT MAKING MONEY 

IT is easy to be hypocritical on the sut^ 
ject of money. We have formed a 
habit of pretending publicly to despise 
money, while actually working our heads 
off to get more of it. 

We make speeches to young men advis- 
ing them to " seek the higher good," and 
hurry straightway to our offices to make 
up for lost time. 

Let us have done with such hypocrisy. 

We are all out to make money; nor is 
there anything reprehensible in that fact. 

Wise old Sam Johnson said: " There 
are few occupations in which men can be 
more harmlessly employed than in mak- 
ing money." 

It is not " money " that is the " root of 
all evil," as we often misquote, but " the 
love of money." 

25 



26 More Power to You 

How much of yourself are you willing to 
sell for money? 

The answer to that question is none of 
my business. It is a personal question — 
a question for you to ask yourself. 

But if you are the sort of person I think 
you are, your answer to it will be some- 
thing like this : 

There are some things I am not willing 
to sell for money. 

/ will not sell my health. Not for all 
the money in the world will I die twenty 
years before my time, as Harriman did; 
nor spend my old age drinking hot water, 
like John D. Rockefeller. 

/ will not sell my home. I will forget 
my business when I leave my office. My 
home shall be a place of rest and high 
thinking and peace — not a mere annex 
to my factory or office, where the talk is 
of nothing but gains and loss. 

/ will not sell my honor. I will not 
engage in any business, no matter what the 
profit, that does not contribute something 
to the happiness and progress of the 
world. 



About Making Money 27 

King Midas, in a fit of covetousness, 
prayed that everything he touched might 
turn to gold. 

And his prayer was granted. 

The food he was lifting to his mouth 
turned to gold : his wife, if he had touched 
her, would have turned to gold. 

There are too many King Midases loose 
in the world. 

They do not have the Midas touch: 
they have the Midas look. 

They see nothing but money. 

A beautiful garden to them is merely 
something that " must have cost a thou- 
sand dollars." 

They look on their homes and they see, 
not a home, but an expense of so much a 
month. 

They look on their wives, and figure 
how much less it cost them to live when 
they lived alone. 

The universe, to them, is a balance- 
sheet: their minds are adding-machines : 
their hearts beat in tune with the ticker. 

God pity them — -the men with the 
Midas look! 



28 More Power to You 

Get money — but stop once in a while 
to figure what it is costing you to get it. 

No man gets it without giving some- 
thing in return. 

The wise man gives his labor and 
ability. 

The fool gives his life. 



VII 

SHOULD WE BE SENT TO JAIL FOR 
EATING THE WRONG FOOD? 

IN Erewhon people were sent to jail for 
eating the wrong food. 
Ever hear of Erewhon? 
It is a mythical country which a man 
named Samuel Butler wrote about. 

This is what I gathered [says Samuel Butler]. 
That in that country, if a man falls into ill health 
or catches any disorder, or fails bodily before he 
is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of 
his countrymen, and if convicted is held up to 
public scorn and sentenced to jail. . . . But if 
a man forges a cheque, or sets a house on fire, or 
does any other such things as are criminal in our 
country, he is either taken to a hospital and most 
carefully tended at the public expense, or, if he 
is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to 
all his friends that he is suffering from a severe 
fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill; 
and they come and visit him with great solici- 
39 



30 More Power to You 

tude, and inquire with interest how it all came 
about, wliat symptoms first showed themselves, 
etc. — questions which he will answer with per- 
fect unreserve. 

Butler says he visited a court in Ere- 
whon, and saw prisoners being sentenced 
for eating improperly and otherwise in- 
juring their health. To one hardened 
criminal the judge said: 

" Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused 
of the great crime of laboring under pulmonary 
consumption, and, after an impartial trial before 
a jury of your countrymen, you have been found 
guilty. . . . This is not your first offense: you 
have had a long career of crime. You were con- 
victed of aggravated bronchitis last year; and I 
find that, although you are now only twenty-three 
years old, you have been imprisoned no less than 
fourteen times for illnesses of a more or less hate- 
ful character. ,, 

In Erewhon, you see, the man who lets 
his health go to pieces is counted a greater 
criminal than the man who burns down a 
barn or forges a check. 

His health is a part of the State's as- 



Eating the Wrong Food 31 

sets: by ruining it he defrauds the State, 
and makes himself liable to punishment. 

There is something to be said in favor 
of the Erewhon custom. 

We are too sympathetic with certain 
sorts of sick people. They are sick be- 
cause of their own bad habits — usually 
because they eat too much or eat the wrong 
kind of food. 

They are very careful that the oil they 
buy for their automobiles shall be of pre- 
cisely the right grade, but they never stop 
to ask themselves, " Am I eating the food 
that is calculated to develop the maximum 
efficiency in my particular body at this par- 
ticular season of the year? " 

Instead of sending such people flowers, 
it would be better if we sent them to jail 
on a healthful diet of plain bread and 
water for a few weeks. They would come 
out cured. 

The Romans were wiser, as old Dr. 
Thomas Moffett tells us: 

The Romans once banished Physickians out of 
Rome under pretense that physick drugs weak- 



32 More Power to You 

ened the peopled stomacks; and cooks for cor- 
rupting and enforcing appetites with strange 
sawces and seasonings. Yet they retained Cato, 
chief dietiest of that time, and all of them that 
were able (without physick) to prevent and cure 
diseases. 

If you would banish physickians and do 
without physick, be your own Cato. 

Find out whether your food is building 
your system up or merely clogging it up. 

Give a little attention to this subject 
if you would be really well — as much 
attention, for instance, as you give to 
discovering the proper oil for your 
automobile. 



VIII 

DO YOU LIVE IN A HOME OR ONLY IN 
A HOUSE? 

PEOPLE use words loosely. 
They speak of " owning a house "' 
and " owning a home n as if both phrases 
meant the same. 

As a matter of fact, many a man who 
pays rent all his life owns his own home; 
and many a family has successfully saved 
for a home only to find itself at last with 
nothing but a house. 

I knew one such case. 

To " own their own home " became a 
perfect obsession with the family — a 
false god to which everything else must 
be sacrificed. 

To swell the sacred fund, the father 
wore clothes so shabby that his business 
progress was retarded. The children 
were under-nourished, and two of them 
died. Life lost every vestige of sweet- 

33 



34 More Power to You 

ness in the driving struggle to scrimp and 
to pay. 

At length ambition was realized: they 
stepped through the door of the house on 
which the last cent had been paid. They 
had bought their house : but in the process 
they had destroyed their home. 

What is the ideal home? 

I should say, first of all, it is a " cozy " 
place, a place not too large. 

The Vatican has 15,000 rooms. The 
Pope could, if he would, sleep every night 
for forty years in a different room. The 
Winter Palace at Petrograd is so vast that, 
once when repairs were to be made on the 
roof, peasants were found living there in 
wooden shacks, their existence unsuspected 
by the glittering tenants underneath. 

But these palaces are not homes. 

The turtle does not construct a shell ten 
times larger than it needs; the bird does 
not spread her nest across a whole tree-top 
merely because materials happen to be 
at hand. Only man commits the foolish 
error of building a house too large to be a 
home. 



A Home or a House? 35 

The ideal home is a place of rest. 

One can rest in a room simply furnished, 
but not in a department store or a 
museum. You would not fill your home 
with warring visitors: do not crowd it 
with pictures, bric-a-brac, and " souve- 
nirs " that jar and clash. 

And the home is a place of peace: 

A place where the soul is " restored"; 
where a few pictures suggest the fragrance 
and healing of the out-of-doors; where 
good books lift the tired mind out of it- 
self into the companionship of the wise 
and great of all ages; where love and sym- 
pathy conquer care. 

The cave-man who first piled stones to- 
gether into a rude hut did it to provide 
a shelter for his most precious possession, 
the sacred fire. 

There is a sacred fire that burns in every 
real home; an altar to restfulness and for- 
bearance and love. The man who can 
claim that altar, whether the shelter built 
about it be a mansion or only a single 
room, he it is who owns his own home. 



IX 



BEING A REAL PRODUCER 

HAVE you ever in your whole life 
raised anything out of the ground? 

Have you with your own hands planted 
a seed, watered it, tended it up through 
infancy to full growth, and finally sat down 
at your table to eat of its fruit? 

In these days of the infinite division of 
labor, when so many of us merely live oft 
each other, there are millions of men and 
women who are born and die without ever 
once tasting that transforming experience. 

However much of books and travel they 
may have known, such people die un- 
educated. 

To them a sunset is merely a color in 
the west: a storm is an interference with 
the routine of their going about. 

They have never looked into the sunset 
yearningly for promise of a warm day that 
will coax the buds upon their plants into 
36 



Being a Real Producer 37 

fuller life: they have never stood and 
watched the leaves fairly leap to be 
watered by the rain. 

They have never once peeped back of 
the curtain of external things to see the 
miracle of God at work on His world. 

Every man and woman who can have 
access to a little piece of land — no mat- 
ter how small — ought to make a garden. 
Not for the sake of thrift alone, but for 
the development of his or her own 
character. 

God was the first gardener: He started 
the human race in a garden. 

From that day to this, whenever man 
has grown weary of the complexities of 
life, whenever his spirit has been dis- 
traught and sore, he has turned back to 
the land, and, with its soil on his fingers 
and its odor in his nostrils, has found heal- 
ing and calm. 

If you are the kind of man who thinks 
at all, you must have periods of depres- 
sion when it dawns on you that your job is 
a very artificial thing, not at all essential 
to the world's existence. 



38 More Power to You 

" What 's the use?" you cry in such 
periods. " I am not needed. Abolish my 
store, or my factory, or my railroad, and 
the world would still go on. It would 
still be fed and clothed. I 'm not a pro- 
ducer of wealth: I merely help in the dis- 
tribution of what somebody else creates. 
The farmer is the only real producer." 

When that feeling comes over you, take 
a spade and go into your back yard and dig 
and plant something. Harvest time will 
come, and you can stand with your throat 
bared and shout defiance to the universe. 

" Behold," you. may cry, " I am no 
longer a burden on any man; for I have 
delved in the earth and raised my own 
food. The world is richer this year by 
five bushels of potatoes and ten pecks of 
peas than it would have been had I not 
lived. I can look every man in the eye 
without shame. I have proved that I am 
independent of circumstance. I can, if 
need be, feed myself." 



X 

PERHAPS YOU DON'T DREAM ENOUGH 

A CERTAIN man went to work for 
John D. Rockefeller in the early 
days. 

After he had been there a couple of 
weeks, Rockefeller dropped into his office 
one afternoon and said: 

" Just as soon as you get this job organ- 
ized I want you to look around for some 
one to turn it over to. Then you put your 
feet on the desk and dream out some way 
of making more money for the Standard 
Oil Company." 

It was a rather startling order for a new 
man to receive from his boss. Appar- 
ently it violated all the time-worn pre- 
cepts of business progress. 

Here was an employer willing to pay 
only small salaries to the kind of men who 

39 



40 More Power to You 

keep their heads forever bent over the 
desk, and reserving his big salaries for the 
kind of men who sit with their feet piled 
on the desk. 

A curious contradiction of all the First 
Reader stories. 

Yet there must be something in it: for 
on the foundation of that philosophy 
Rockefeller built the biggest fortune in 
the world. 

As a matter of fact, there is a great 
deal in it. 

The world would not have advanced 
very far had it not been for the contribu- 
tions of its dreamers. 

It would never have gained its steam- 
boat, nor its Atlantic cable, nor its wire- 
less telegraph, nor its electric light. 

It would never have acquired any really 
great enterprise. 

For a little enterprise may be rustled 
and worried into being: but a really great 
program or movement or business must 
be dreamed. 

Over in West Orange, New Jersey, I 
stood one day in Mr. Edison's laboratory, 



Do You Dream Enough? 41 

talking with him. And as we talked I 
looked out across the huge expanse of con- 
crete factories stretching all around us. 
Shop after shop, all full of men and 
machines, all turning out their special part 
of the product. 

And a certain sense of awe came over 
me. To think, I said to myself, that all 
this huge pile of factories should have been 
spun out of one single little human brain. 
Thousands of tons of iron and concrete 
and brick and mortar, all built on — 
what? On nothing but one man's ideas, 
and faith and dreams. 

Most of the work of carrying on the 
world is necessarily hard and dull and 
routine in character: and for it the world 
needs us men and women who can steel 
our souls against weariness and monotony, 
and press forward with good cheer. 

We are entitled to respect just in pro- 
portion as we do our work without 
grumbling, in a spirit of real devotion. 

We can not by the mere wishing become 
Edisons or Watts : it would be worse than 
folly for us to pile our feet upon the desk 



42 More Power to You 

and say, " Go to, now; I will not work any 
longer: I will dream a dream." 

But almost any one of us could vastly 
increase the amount of imagination that 
he uses in his daily life. The faculty of 
vision, like any other human faculty, grows 
through exercise. 

It is easy to become so engrossed with 
the mere mechanics of business as to lose 
the habit of thought. Easy to say, 
" Yours received and contents noted " a 
certain number of times during the day, 
and go home with the notion that one has 
done a good day's work. When the really 
valuable work of the day could have been 
and should have been done under the 
shower-bath in the morning, or in the fif- 
teen minutes' walk across the park to the 
office. 

One man in a million wakes up, like 
Lord Byron, to " find himself famous." 

But the majority of famous men are not 
taken unawares by fame. 

On the wall of their minds hangs their 
own vision of what they ought to be and 
can be. 



Do You Dream Enough? 43 

They are not surprised by success when 
it comes; because they have seen it coming, 
and planned out its coming, in their 
dreams. 



XI 

A LESSON FROM LUIGI 

HERE is a recipe for living a hundred 
years. 

It is not based upon any theory of mine. 
If it were it would be worthless. For I 
have not lived a hundred years. 

But Luigi Cornaro lived to be one hun- 
dred and two, and u died painlessly, as one 
who falls into sweet sleep.' ' The formula 
is his. 

At thirty-six, the doctors said to Luigi : 
" Make your will; you have only a few 
months to live." 

At the end of the few months they came 
back expecting to sign his death certificate. 
To their surprise, they found him well. 

What had Luigi done? Taken medi- 
cine? No. 

What he did was the simplest thing in 
44 






A Lesson from Luigi 45 

the world. He merely stopped eating. 

Instead of three heavy meals a day, he 
substituted three very light ones. Instead 
of getting up from the table with a feel- 
ing of fullness, he got up feeling still 
hungry. 

Instead of half a dozen different dishes, 
he confined himself to one at each meal. 
And each day he ate the same dish, at the 
same time, and in the same amount. 

Year after year he continued to grow 
stronger. At seventy he was thrown from 
his horse, and again the doctors said: 
" No man of seventy can stand such an 
accident; you will die." But so strong 
was Luigi that he was out of bed in ,no 
time at all. 

In his years of careful eating he made 
some important discoveries. 

He discovered, first, that the rule, 
" Whatever your appetite craves is good 
for you," is a bad rule. Many foods of 
which he was very fond proved bad for 
him : and some others which he had never 
liked proved to have just the nourish- 
ment that his system required. 



46 More Power to You 

He discovered that " a man can not be 
a perfect physician of any one save of him- 
self alone." In other words, that no 
physician could prescribe for him offhand 
a diet as well suited to his needs as he 
could prescribe for himself, after years of 
careful study of his own requirements. 

All women have an idea that men ought 
to eat a great deal. If a man is feeling 
badly, a woman's remedy is always to 
make him sit down to a large, appetizing 
meal. 

Luigi's women-folks were no different 
from others. When he was about eighty 
they gathered around him and persuaded 
him to increase his daily food allowance 
from twelve to fourteen ounces a day. As 
a result he nearly died. 

Then he went back to his twelve-ounce 
diet, and lived twenty-two years longer. 

" Most men," said a philosopher, " dig 
their graves with their teeth." 

Diogenes, seeing a young man going to 
a banquet, caught him and took him home, 
and rejoiced as if he had saved him from 
some great danger. 



A Lesson from Luigi 47 

" If I were to assign any one thing as 
especially conducing to long life from a 
study of the habits of centenarians," says 
Sir Henry Thompson, " it would be semi- 
starvation" 

" Semi-starvation " — the word makes 
you gasp, but have no fear. You can cut 
down your eating a long way below where 
it is now and still be in no danger. 

Luigi's granddaughter reports that 
" during the latter part of his life the yolk 
of one egg sufficed for a meal and some- 
times two." 

If you would live long, eat very tern- 
perately of a few pure foods. 

This is one of the wisest lessons you can 
ever learn. 

It is the lesson from Luigi. 



XII 

I WOULD IF HE WERE MY BOY 

A MOTHER asked me recently to 
recommend a list of books for her 
boy to read. 

I answered: 

Start him with a " Life of Lincoln"; 
then a "Life of Washington"; then a 
"Life of Cromwell"; and Franklin's auto- 
biography. When he has read these, I 
will recommend some more. 

Do not buy these books for him. Take 
him to a book-store and let him buy them 
for himself. Let his library be his own 
library. The love of books is an intoxi- 
cating habit, like the love of liquor. If 
more boys were taught to haunt book- 
stores, fewer of them would haunt saloons. 

Then I went on to say: 

And don't forget that the best and big- 
gest and wisest book lies all around him 
48 



If He Were My Boy 49 

and costs nothing. Do not let your boy 
grow up without some knowledge of the 
miracle of creation as it is exhibited in the 
growth of a garden of flowers. 

These books that I have recommended 
are the biographies of mighty men. Na- 
ture is the autobiography of Almighty 
God. 

No matter where you live or how busy 
you are, help your boy to make a garden. 
Perhaps you are penned up in an apart- 
ment. Never mind. Let him plant some- 
thing, if it be only a packet of seeds in a 
window-box. 

If you would expand his soul, fill it full 
of reverence. 

" The love of dirt," says Charles Dud- 
ley Warner, " is among the earliest of 
passions, as it is the latest. Mud pies 
gratify one of our first and best instincts. 
So long as we are dirty, we are pure. 
Fondness for the ground comes back to a > 
man after he has run the round of pleas- 
ures, eaten dirt, and sowed wild oats, 
drifted around the world, and taken the 
wind of all its moods. 



50 More Power to You 

" The man who has planted a garden 
feels that he has done something for the 
good of the world. 

" It is not simply beets and potatoes and 
string-beans that one raises in his well kept 
garden. There is life in the ground. It 
goes into the seeds; and it also, when 
stirred up, goes into the man who stirs 
it" 

Tell your boy the story of Antaeus. 

Antaeus was a giant, and it was one of, 
Hercules' tasks to kill him. But Hercules 
discovered that every time he threw 
Antaeus to the ground, the giant came up 
stronger than ever. He had only to touch 
the soil to have his strength and courage 
renewed. 

Men are like that — and boys. 

There is, first of all, health for the boy 
who digs in the ground. It is not by 
chance that so large a percentage of our 
successful men grew up bare-footed on the 
farm. 

There is discipline and respect for hon- 
est toil. No boy who has weeded a 
garden on his hands and knees, under the 



If He Were My Boy 51 

hot sun, is likely to grow up to be a spend- 
thrift or a snob. 

And there is — most of all — rever- 
ence. 

" I often think, when working over my 
plants," said John Fiske, " of what Lin- 
naeus once said of the unfolding of a blos- 
som : ' I saw God in His glory passing 
near me, and bowed my head in worship.' " 

By all means, teach your boy the love 
of good books. But do not let him hold 
his books so close to his eyes that he fails 
to read the greatest mystery serial story 
in the world — the serial story of which 
God writes a new and more wonderful in- 
stalment every spring. 



XIII 

MUSIC IS NOT MERELY ENTERTAIN- 
MENT: IT IS ALSO MEDICINE 

I LIKE grand opera music, and dislike 
grand opera. In the first place, 
grand opera costs too much. 

In the second place, it seems to me a 
hybrid art. Acting and singing no more 
belong together — for me — than read- 
ing and dancing. The acting of a play or 
the narration of a story carries me along 
with it. I can surrender myself to the 
illusion: identify myself with the charac- 
ters and forget everything in my interest 
in their affairs. 

But it is simply beyond me to feel any 
illusion concerning a love scene between 
two supposedly passionate young lovers, 
when the parts are sung by a burly Italian 
man and a burly German woman, both 
52 



Music Is Medicine 53 

over forty years old and more than forty 
stone in weight. 

The only way I can enjoy the acting 
of opera is to close my eyes. 

Furthermore, I like to be able to start 
my opera and stop it when I want to; to 
smoke if I like, or lie down if I like ; and, 
finally, to be able to leave when I get 
ready, without feeling that I am losing any 
money by doing so. 

In other words, I like my opera on a 
machine. 

Music is not merely entertainment: it 
is medicine. 

Pythagoras, who lived many hundred 
years ago, discovered that. He was able 
to work wonders in cases of violent in- 
sanity with no other remedy than soothing 
music. 

Esquirol, the celebrated French alien- 
ist, said: " Music acts most powerfully 
on the physical and moral nature, and I 
use it constantly in mental disease. It 
soothes and calms the patient's mind, and, 
though it may not cure, it is a most pre- 
cious agent and ought not to be neglected." 



54 More Power to You 

Gladstone, attacked by occasional 
periods of nervous exhaustion, would have 
his favorite hymns sung to him. 

Herbert Spencer, when neuralgia shot 
him through, lay down and ordered soft 
music played, and invariably obtained re- 
lief. 

And I, in my humble fashion, have the 
same experience. 

I like to go home in the evening before 
dinner, and lie down for half an hour and 
listen to my favorite music. 

If I need stimulation, there are stimulat- 
ing pieces; if relaxation, there are selec- 
tions that relax; if sleep, there are songs 
that carry one over pleasant pastures and 
lay one down under fragrant apple trees 
to peaceful slumber. 

Music is a mental and spiritual mas- 
sage, or a bracing cold shower bath, ac- 
cording to what you select. I personally 
do not care to take my spiritual massage 
in the Metropolitan Opera House, any 
more than I would care to have my hair 
cut in Madison Square Garden. 

Every child should grow up in a home 



Music Is Medicine 55 

where music is constantly played. Every 
experience of a happy youth should have 
some particular song bound up with it, so 
that the playing of that song in after life 
will reawaken that experience and cause 
it to be lived again. 

I can never hear Handel's u Largo " 
without living over one of the quiet Sun- 
days of my boyhood, because it was played 
in our house almost every Sunday. 

II Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," brings back a 
memory to me that is peculiarly intimate 
and sweet. There are a hundred favor- 
ites — each calling its own particular bit 
of grand opera back into my memory — a 
fragment of the opera of my own life. 

Do not deny your child the blessed min- 
istry of music. It is one of the rarest 
gifts. 

Sweeten his soul with it. Perhaps you 
may even be able to teach him to love 
opera. If not, you can at least teach him 
to love music in his own home. 

And he will be in good company. That 
is the way the prophet Elisha liked his 
music. Of him it is written that, when 



56 



More Power to You 



driven to utter weariness by the perplexi- 
ties of his business, he would cry: 

" But now bring me a minstrel. 

" And it came to pass, when the min- 
strel played, that the hand of the Lord 
came upon him." 






XIV 

A FEW KIND WORDS FOR BUSINESS 

I GRADUATED from college when 
muckraking was in its greatest glory. 

The magazines and newspapers and re- 
formers had filled our youthful minds with 
so much distressing information that we 
hardly knew whether the world was a safe 
place for us to step out into or not. 

We looked askance on all the fellows 
in college whose fathers had made money. 
To be sure, the fathers seemed decent 
enough old codgers when they visited us 
at the fraternity house. But we felt that 
something was dark and bad in their past 
somewhere. 

We would not have been seen walking 
on the street with John D. Rockefeller 
for anything. 

I remember visiting Washington and 
looking at the United States Senate. I 
57 



58 More Power to You 

felt as if I were inside the gates of Sing 
Sing. 

There was So-and-So from Texas: we 
had been told that the Oil Trust owned 
him. There was So-and-So from Wiscon- 
sin: the railroads owned him. And so on. 

All there through some unholy alliance. 

All city governments were corrupt; all 
laws were passed from evil motives; all 
business was yoked together in a vast un- 
seen network, fashioned and fostered to 
exploit the nation. 

A business man was a being without con- 
science or intelligence, like a slot-machine. 
You gave him a nickel and he gave you a 
nickel's worth of goods. 

If he took your nickel and withheld the 
goods, then he was a successful business 
man. 

Running a magazine was very easy in 
those days. 

All one had to do was to take down a 
map of the United States and place his 
finger on any spot — say Owosso, Michi- 
gan. Then call in a writer and say, " Get 



Kind Words for Business 59 

on the train and go out and see what is 
rotten in Owosso." 

Muckraking did some good: but we 
have come to realize now that it over- 
played its hand. 

In fact, I believe it could be shown that 
the greatest force for righteousness in the 
United States to-day is nothing more nor 
less than the once maligned Business. 

Certainly Business is the greatest force 
in America working for temperance. 

The young men of half a century ago 
were pretty heavy drinkers. The young 
men of to-day have given up drink. 

Not altogether because they were ar- 
gued into it or scared into it: but also be- 
cause they know that it destroys their effi- 
ciency and cripples their progress in Busi- 
ness. 

Business is the greatest ally and pro- 
moter of Honesty. And more and more 
I have come to feel that Honesty is, after 
all, the corner-stone of all the virtues. 

I have seen a business man refuse to 
sign a document that contained the tiniest 



60 More Power to You 

little misstatement — a misstatement that 
probably never would have been detected, 
and might have meant thousands of dol- 
lars in profits to him. 

I have seen a man whose time is worth 
a thousand dollars a day spend half an 
hour editing a single advertisement — so 
jealous was he of his firm's reputation 
for never making a false claim or an ex- 
travagant assertion. 

Business has taught that honesty is the 
best policy; and millions of young men 
have been made better citizens by first 
being made better business men. 

Nothing has impressed me more than 
this: Get to the top of a big business 
enterprise, and nine times out of ten you 
will find an idealist. 

You will find a man who has long since 
ceased to be interested in mere money- 
making, who is staying in business because 
of what he wants his business to do for 
his employees, his community, and his 
country. 

I do not say that Business is perfect. 
Far from it. 



Kind Words for Business 6 1 

But I do say that the time is past when 
the young man who goes into business 
needs to feel that he is making a selfish 
choice — a choice that cuts him off from 
service to his fellow men. 

"Be not slothful in business" said St. 
Paul, " fervent in spirit; serving the 
Lord." 

Many a man, building a big business in 
America, has, as a by-product of his build- 
ing, strengthened the character and lifted 
the ideals of hundreds of his associates, 
and helped in the regeneration of a whole 
community. 

And the number of such men — the 
idealists of Business in America — is in- 
creasing very fast. 



XV 

SOME POOR BLIND FOLK HAVE NEVER 
SEEN A MIRACLE 

HERE is an important distinction 
that many people overlook. 

God made the world; but He does not 
make yourjworld. 

He provides the raw materials, and out 
of them every man selects what he wants 
and builds an individual world for him- 
self. 

The fool looks over the wealth of ma- 
terial provided, and selects a few plates 
of ham and eggs, a few pairs of trousers, 
a few dollar bills — and is satisfied. 

The wise man builds his world out of 
wonderful sunsets, and thrilling experi- 
ences, and the song of the stars, and ro- 
mance and miracles. 

Nothing wonderful ever happens in the 
life of the fool. 

62 



Speaking of Miracles 63 

A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose is to him, 
And it is nothing more. 

An electric light is simply an electric light ; 
a telephone is only a telephone — nothing 
unusual at all. 

But the wise man never ceases to won- 
der how a tiny speck of seed, apparently 
dead and buried, can produce a beautiful 
yellow flower. He never lifts a telephone 
receiver or switches on an electric light 
without a certain feeling of awe. 

And think what a miracle it is, this 
harnessing of electricity to the service of 
man! 

Who, unless his sense of awe had grown 
blunt through constant familiarity, would 
believe it? 

The sun, the center of our universe, 
goes down behind the western horizon. 
I touch a button, and presto ! I have 
called it back — the room is flooded anew 
with light. 

The thunder that men once called the 
voice of God rolls out its mighty waves 
of sound, and the sound carries only a few 



64 More Power to You 

score miles. But I — puny speck upon 
the face of the earth — I lift a little in- 
strument: and, behold, my whisper is 
heard a thousand miles away. 

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and 
brought it down to earth. For that crime 
the gods chained him to a lonely rock and 
sent a huge bird to feed upon his vitals. 
Each night the wound healed, and each 
day it was torn open again. 

That was the punishment of the man 
who dared to wrest away the richest treas- 
ure of the gods. 

But fire - — the treasure of the gods — > 
has almost disappeared out of our daily 
life : we scorn it. 

Do we want heat? We press a but- 
ton: and lo, heat, invisible, silent, all- 
pervasive, flows into our homes over a 
copper wire. 

Do we need power? We have but to 
press another switch, and giants come to 
us over the same slender roadway. 
Clothed in invisible garments, they cleanse 
our homes, wash our clothes, crank our 
automobiles — do everything that once 



Speaking of Miracles 65 

taxed the strength of men and hurried 
women into unlovely old age. 

Don't let your life become a prosaic 
affair: don't let familiarity with the mar- 
vels about you breed thoughtlessness and 
contempt. 

Let the fool build his world out of mere 
food and drink and clothes: you fashion 
yours out of marvelous experiences: fur- 
nish and decorate it with miracles. 

Exercise your mind in the wholesome 
activity of wonder : train your soul to rev- 
erent awe. 

If you had stood with Moses on the 
shore of the Red Sea, and had seen it 
divide to let the children of Israel pass 
over, you would have had no difficulty in 
recognizing that as a miracle. 

But every night when the sun goes down, 
a man stands in a power-house in your 
city and throws a switch, and instantly the 
city and the country for miles around are 
flooded with sunshine. 

And you say to yourself casually: 
" Oh, I see the lights are on." 



XVI 

I REASSURE A MOTHER 

A MOTHER writes me about her son's 
reading. Among other things, she 
says: 

In spite of all I can do or say, he insists on 
reading stories. How can I correct this habit? 

Frankly, madam, I do not know. 

It is about as easy to cure a boy of eat- 
ing as it is to destroy his love for good 
stories. 

Centuries before there was any writ- 
ing, story-tellers drifted about from vil- 
lage to village, gathering the people to- 
gether and telling them stories. 

The love of fiction is as old as that — 
older than recorded history, older even 
than civilization. It can not be rooted 
out: its roots run back too far. 

And why should you want to root it 
out? 

The greatest Teacher that ever lived 
66 



I Reassure a Mother 67 

spent half His time telling stories to His 
disciples. " Without a parable [a story] 
He taught them nothing." These stories 
have transformed humanity. 

One great story written in our own coun- 
try, " Uncle Tom's Cabin, " so stirred 
men's hearts that they said, " Slavery must 

go." 

Good stories will not hurt your boy: 
they may, if he is the right kind of boy, 
inspire him to real achievement. 

And they will do something else for 
him, equally important. They will de- 
velop his imagination. 

We have too little regard for the high 
value of the imagination, we Americans. 
We are too matter-of-fact. We forget 
that all great inventions, all great discov- 
eries, all great achievements in science or 
business, came to pass because some man 
first had imagination enough to conceive 
them. 

Many men have been hit on the head 
by a falling apple. Newton, when the 
apple hit him, had imagination enough to 
formulate the law of gravitation. 



68 More Power to You 

Many men have been burned by their 
wives' tea-kettles. Watt had imagination 
enough to conceive the steam-engine. 

Look through the pages of history, and 
you will discover that the leaders of men 
have been those who could dream great 
dreams and carry them out — the men of 
powerful, intelligent imagination. 

Because this is true, the editor of a mag- 
azine that prints stories has a responsi- 
bility that he must take seriously if he is 
any sort of man at all. He is intrusted 
with the duty of stimulating the imagina- 
tion of thousands of children of mothers 
like you. 

He may, if he choose, publish stories 
whose appeal is to the baser side of the 
imagination — and even achieve a certain 
sort of circulation increase for his maga- 
zine by so doing. Or he may regard 
every mother among his readers as if she 
were his own mother, and every mother's 
son as a younger brother. 

You need not concern yourself because 
your boy likes stories. But are the stories 



/ Reassure a Mother 69 

he reads the right kind of stories — do 
they appeal to his imagination on its best 
and highest side? 

That is the important question for you." 



XVII 

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHETHER 

YOUR BRAIN IS FLABBY, FEEL 

OF YOUR LEGS 

THIS is one of the greatest tragedies 
of modern life. Men are forget- 
ting how to walk. 

They travel by taxi-cabs and street cars ; 
they travel by automobile; they project 
their personalities over a telephone wire. 

But they do not walk. 

There is a double loss in this. 

A loss in health, first. Most of the 
diseases of modern men originate in the 
intestines. Formerly men and women 
walked enough to keep the stomach mus- 
cles firm, the intestines healthfully agi- 
tated. 

Now men — and women even more so 
— sit all day slumped in. 

Germs settle down inside them gladly; 
70 



// Your Brain Is Flabby 71 

and Death, his work made easy for him, 
laughs. 

There is another loss, equally great. 
A loss in mental keenness and mental 
wealth. 

Did you ever take a walk in the country 
with some one who knows really how to 
walk? 

Some one of the type of the naturalist 
Linnaeus, for instance ? 

Linnaeus walked into Oland, and found 
the lands of the farmers ruined by sand 
blown from the beaches. 

He discovered that the roots of a cer- 
tain beach grass were long and firm: he 
taught the farmers to sow that grass along 
the beach, and so preserved their lands 
from ruin. 

He walked into Thorne, and found that 
at a certain period in every year the cattle 
fell sick and died. 

It was a curse, the people said — the 
act of angry spirits. 

But Linnaeus, examining the pastures, 
uncovered a noxious weed, and showed 
the farmers how the work of one laborer 



J2 More Power to You 

for a few days every season would root it 
out 

In his walks he examined and cata- 
logued 8,000 plants, vegetables, and 
flowers. 

How many plants, vegetables, and 
flowers do you think you could identify if 
you were to see them in their native state ? 

" Few men," said Dr. Johnson, " know 
how to take a walk." 

It was so in his day. It is even more 
true now. 

But those favored few enjoy a glorious 
and mysterious privilege. 

To discover where the violets first 
bloom in the spring — 

To be able to tell directions in the 
woods, by knowing that large pine trees 
bear more numerous branches on their 
southern side — 

Or that grass grows on the south side 
of ant-hills and whortle-berries on the 
north — 

To learn to greet the wild flowers by 
name — 

There are few pleasures more richly sat- 



If Your Brain Is Flabby 73 

isfying; none that pay larger dividends in 
health. 

The man who goes into the country 
once a week is a better citizen than the 
man who never goes, even though his eyes 
see nothing more inspiring on his walk 
than a golf ball. 

But far more to be envied is that little 
inner circle of Nature's favorites who 
speak her language intimately; who read 
her thoughts in her woods and brooks and 
flowers. 

11 You shall never break down in a 
speech," said a great English statesman, 
11 on the day that you have walked twelve 
miles." 

Flabby legs usually mean flabby brains. 

If you would think clearly, speak force- 
fully, work effectively, get out into the 
country when you can — and walk. 



XVIII 

DO BABIES LIKE YOU? THAT 's A 
PRETTY GOOD TEST 

TOW do you like babies?" some 
AX woman asked Charles Lamb. 

" B-b-oiled, madam," stuttered Lamb. 

In the beginning of the race nobody 
except mothers liked babies. 

The records of civilization's slow prog- 
ress are written in babies' blood. 

Babies had no rights: they were a neces- 
sary evil. 

In the South Sea Islands, when either 
parent died, the children were slain and 
buried also, to wait on the parent in the 
other world. 

In China it is estimated that 40 per 
cent, of the girl babies in the provinces 
of the interior were drowned. 

In India, when a girl baby was born, the 
mother put opium on her breasts, and the 
74 






Do Babies Like You? 75 

baby, inhaling it with the mother's milk, 
died. 

Inside the great brass statue of Moloch 
a roaring fire was built on holy days. 
And into the seething arms of the god 
women hurled their screaming infants. 

Even the Greeks, who established a 
civilization higher than that of any other 
ancient people, regularly " exposed n their 
undesired infants on the mountain-sides. 

And Socrates, their greatest man, saw 
nothing in the practice to condemn. 

Little by little, through the succeeding 
centuries, the baby has been coming into 
his own. 

Romulus, who founded Rome, took the 
first forward step; the Emperor Hadrian 
made another advance. 

But it was Christianity that discovered 
the baby. 

All motherhood became sanctified in 
the worship paid to Mary, the mother of 
Jesus. 

All childhood was ennobled by the birth 
in the manger. 

To-day we measure the civilization of a 



76 More Power to You 

nation by the question : How does it treat 
its babies? 

And the civilization of an individual 
can be measured by the same test. 

Do you consider babies a nuisance? 
Do you dislike them? Do they fear you? 

Then — though your culture may be- 
long to the twentieth century — your heart 
still lingers in the first. 

It 's a question how much any one man 
influences the world through his business 
life or his public acts. 

Alexander conquered the world. And, 
before his ashes were cold, his kingdom 
began to break up. 

But one little section of the human race 
is given into your care irrevocably: 

Your babies. 

What you make them they will be. 
Through them and their descendants you 
can perpetuate your influence to the end 
of time. 

If there is a baby in your home, 
nursing-bottles ought to be more impor- 
tant to you than stocks and bonds. 

You ought to know more about the 



Do Babies Like You? yy 

various kinds of baby foods than you know 
about golf. 

Your business is important because it 
makes your living. 

But your home is all-important because 
there you make lives. 

In it are molded the characters of the 
future proprietors of the earth: your chil- 
dren — the most important citizens in the 
world. 



XIX 

NOW WILL YOU STOP THAT SUNDAY 
WORK ? 

THIS is a " scientific " age. 
The way to get a man married is 
not to introduce him to a pretty girl. 

You must prove to him by statistics 
that married men are more successful and 
live longer than single men. 

Then he goes about it scientifically. 

It used to be sufficient merely to tell a 
child, " Remember the Sabbath day, to 
keep it holy. In it thou shalt not do any 
work." 

But the modern child — and man — 
asks, Why? 

Well, here is one reason why — a 
scientific reason. 

Dr. E. G. Martin, of the Harvard 
Medical School, selected nine first-year 
medical students, all in good health, and 
78 



Stop That Sunday Work 79 

tested them every day for eight weeks with 
electric currents. 

Each day he recorded the smallest shock 
that they could feel. The smaller the 
shock they could feel, the higher their 
sensitiveness. A high sensitiveness means 
high nervous efficiency. 

You know that from your own experi- 
ence. 

You have been so " dead tired" you 
could not taste the food you were eating; 
so tired that you hardly felt a blow or a 
prick which would otherwise have caused 
you severe pain. Your sensitiveness was 
low. 

And Dr. Martin discovered this : 

There was an unmistakable tendency for the 
sensitiveness to be at its highest at the beginning 
of the week and to sink steadily from day to day 
until the week's end, reaching the lowest point 
on Saturday. With the return of Monday fol- 
lowing the Sunday recess the sensitiveness was 
back at its former high point. 

The chart on the next page shows the 
results of the experiment: 



80 More Power to Yo 



u 



It shows what happens to your reservoir 
of nervous energy every week. 

Monday you are keen, alert, ready for 
anything. 

Tuesday you are not quite so fit. 

Thursday and Friday and Saturday you 
slump off very fast, each day a little less 
fresh than the day before. And by Sat- 
urday night you are dead tired. 

Then, if you rest Sunday, you are back 
to high-water mark again Monday morn- 
ing. If you do not rest, you go down and 
down. 



Stop That Sunday Work 81 

The results [says Dr. Martin] show that the 
repose of a single night following a day of toil 
does not afford complete restoration of the im- 
paired nervous tissues; and furthermore that the 
longer period furnished by the Sunday recess 
gives, under ordinary conditions, the longer time 
needed for the expulsion of the accumulated fa- 
tigue products and the recovery of efficiency. 

Arnold Bennett, in " The Truth About 
an Author," tells how, after working 
seven days a week for several years, he 
learned that a day of complete rest greatly 
added to his efficiency. 

The man who carries his work home with him 
and dwells on it in the time devoted ostensibly to 
rest [concludes Dr. Martin] is defeating the very 
purpose he seeks — increased efficiency. 

"'Remember the Sabbath day," says 
modern Science. 

But the Bible said it thousands of years 
ago. 

Some day, when you have had enough 
scientific proof, you will begin to believe 
that there are quite a good many things 
in the Bible worth knowing and believing. 



I 



XX 

ASK ANY SUCCESSFUL MAN 

SHOULD like to have this carved on 
my tombstone : 



Here lies .a man who edited a magazine: he 
made many mistakes, but we forgive him for 
them, because year after year he preached Thrift 
to his readers, he encouraged several million peo- 
ple to save money. 

We are not a thrifty people, as com- 
pared with other nations. 

Belgium before the war was known as 
a " country without paupers " ; of France's 
10,000,000 voters nine tenths are owners 
of government bonds. There are 12,- 
500,000 savings accounts in France, and 
half of them little ones — less than $4. 

But only one in ten of us have savings 
accounts: the rest of us are " good 
fellows." 

82 



Ask Any Successful Man 83 

I attended the funeral of a " good fel- 
low " recently. He had always " lived 
up to his income." When the company 
for which he worked was reorganized ten 
years ago, the president said to him: 
11 Have you a thousand dollars? " 

A thousand dollars put into that busi- 
ness ten years ago would be earning a com- 
petence for his widow to-day. But the 
44 good fellow" did not have it: he had 
never learned to save. And now we are 
raising a fund to buy his daughter a piano, 
so that she can give music lessons. 

I came away from the funeral with an- 
other man whose salary has never been 
as large as the " good fellow's." We 
rode in his automobile. 

u Do you know how I paid for this automo- 
bile ?" he asked. " Out of the dividends that 
came to me last year from my savings. When 
I was getting eighteen dollars a week, my wife 
took two of it every week and put it into the 
savings bank, where we could n't touch it. 
When I was raised to twenty-five, she raised the 
savings fund to five a week; and so on. I 'm 
forty-seven years old now. I 've never had a big 



84 More Power to You 

salary, as you know; but I could retire to-mor- 
row, if I wanted to, and have more than thirty 
dollars a week in dividends from the money I Ve 
saved. I tell you, I don't know anything that 
makes a man face the world with so much confi- 
dence as the knowledge that he has made himself 
independent of it." 

There you have them side by side — the 
" good fellow " and the " wise fellow." 
All of us belong in one class or the other. 
Which class are you in? 

" If you want to know whether you are going 
to be a success or a failure in life," said James J. 
Hill, " you can easily find out. The test is sim- 
ple and infallible. Are you able to save money? 
If not, drop out. You will lose. You may not 
think it, but you will lose as sure as you live. 
The seed of success is not in you." 

There is not a single man, woman, or 
child in America who can not save some 
money if he or she will set out de- 
terminedly to do it. 

" Ah," you object. " How can you say 
that? You do not know my circum- 
stances." 



Ask Any Successful Man 85 

No, I do not. But if circumstances dic- 
tate your life, this is not written for you. 
You will not succeed anyway: you do not 
count. 

11 Circumstances! " exclaimed Napoleon. 
" I make circumstances." 



XXI 

IF YOU CAN GIVE YOUR SON ONLY ONE 
GIFT, LET IT BE ENTHUSIASM 

A LITTLE while ago I was in charge 
of a large organization of salesmen. 

My chief sent me to a Western city to 
appoint a manager for that territory. 

There were two candidates. We had 
their records in detail, but we had never 
met either of them. I was to look them 
over, form my judgment, and appoint the 
better man. 

I met one man in Cincinnati, the other 
in St. Louis. 

The man in Cincinnati said to me: 
" What does this position pay?" I told 
him. " That is more than I am getting 
here," he said, " and I should like the job. 
Every man wants to better himself when 
he can." 

The St. Louis man did not wait for me 
86 



Give Your Son Enthusiasm 87 

to arrive in the city. He found out on 
what train I was coming, rode out on the 
line, and surprised me by walking down 
the aisle of my car. He began to talk. 
He told me about himself, his training and 
his selling experience. He had drawn up 
plans in detail for the development of our 
territory ; he told me how many men he ex- 
pected to have working by the end of the 
year, and just how he thought he could 
increase our volume of business. 

I had to hire him, finally, in order to 
get a chance to go to bed at night. And 
in his enthusiasm he forgot to ask me 
and I forgot to tell him what the salary 
would be. 

The first man had wanted a better job, 
which is commendable enough. But I 
hired the man who was enthusiastic about 
the opportunity. 

Napoleon's adversaries used to speak 
of him as " the 100,000 man" — mean- 
ing that his spirit infused into an army 
was equal to an additional 100,000 troops. 

They criticized his tactics; they accused 
him of disregarding all the rules of sue- 



88 More Power to You 

cessful warfare : yet he won and they lost. 
Because his enthusiasm carried his soldiers 
to impossible achievements. 

We are told a great deal about the 
necessity for controlling our emotions, for 
being self-contained, for not letting our 
enthusiasm sweep us off our feet. 

Much of this advice is very wise. 

But don't forget that the Indians 
were very self-contained. They controlled 
their emotions so successfully that it was a 
point of pride among them never to ex- 
hibit pleasure or pain or love or en- 
thusiasm. 

And the Indians used to own this coun- 
try— and do not own it any more. 

It was taken away from them — 

By men like Columbus, who believed so 
enthusiastically that the world was round, 
in an age when other people believed it 
flat, that he risked tumbling off into space 
in order to discover a new continent. 

By men like Fulton, who believed that 
steam could be made to run a boat in spite 
of wind or tide. 

By men like Marcus Whitman, who 



Give Your Son Enthusiasm 89 

was so enthusiastic about the great un- 
known West that he rode alone across the 
continent to add the Western empire to 
our country. 

By men like James J. Hill, whose en- 
thusiasm could picture towns and farms 
where other men saw only useless prairies. 

Take your son on trips; show him 
the big men of his own time, such as the 
President of the United States; and the 
great sights of the world, such as Niagara 
Falls. 

Encourage him to express his enthu- 
siasm and delight. Let him believe that 
the world is full of wonderful things, and 
he himself full of splendid possibilities. 

He can learn self-repression in later 
years: but enthusiasm, once lost, is lost 
forever. 

11 Men are nothing," said Montaigne, 
" until they are excited." 

And Montaigne was right. 

Of two boys with equal ability, the one 
who can be excited about his work, day 
after day and year after year, is the boy 
that is going to win. 



XXII 

HAVE YOU CEASED TO STUDY? 
IF SO, GOOD NIGHT 

A MAN named Brown and a man 
named Black graduated from high 
school and entered business in New York 
at the same time. 

Both made rapid progress. At twenty- 
five each of them was drawing $2,500 a 
year. 

" Coming men," said their friends. 
" If they are so far along at twenty-five, 
where will they be at fifty? " 

Black went on. At fifty he is president 
of his company, with an income of 
$25,000 a year. 

But something happened to Brown. He 
never fulfilled the large promise of his 
youth: at fifty he had hardly advanced be- 
yond his thirty mark. 

What was it that happened to these two 
00 



Have You Ceased to Study? 91! 

men, of equal education and — so far as 
the world could judge — equal ability? 

I will tell you. 

Brown became satisfied. He ceased to 
study: which means that he ceased to 
grow. 

Black has told me that when he reached 
$5,000 a year he said to himself: " I have 
made a good start. Nothing can stop me 
if I keep my health and keep growing. I 
must study, study, study: I must be the 
best informed man on our business in the 
United States." 

There is the difference. One stayed in 
school: one did not. 

The position you attain before you are 
twenty-five years old is of no particular 
credit to you. You gained that simply on 
the education your parents gave you — 
education that cost you no sacrifice. 

But the progress you make in the world 
after twenty-five — that is progress that 
you must make by educating yourself. It 
will be in proportion to the amount of 
study you give to your work in excess of 
the amount the other man gives. 



92 More Power to You 

Analyze any successful man and you 
will find these three great facts : 
He had an aim: 

Lord Campbell wrote to his father, as an 
excuse for not coming home over the holi- 
days: 

" To have any chance of success, I must be 
more steady than other men. I must be in cham- 
bers when they are at the theater: I must study 
when they are asleep: I must, above all, remain 
in town when they are in the country." 

He worked: 

u I have worked, " said Daniel Webster, " for 
more than twelve hours a day for fifty years." 

He studied: 

Vice-President Henry Wilson was born in the 
direst poverty. 

" Want sat by my cradle," he says. " I know 
what it is to ask my mother for bread when 
she had none to give. I left home when ten 
years of age, and served an apprenticeship of 
eleven years, receiving one month's schooling 
each year, and at the end of eleven years of hard 
work a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought 
me $84." 



Have You Ceased to Study? 93 

Yet in those eleven years of grueling 
labor he found time to read and study 
more than one hundred books. 

Really big men check themselves up 
each autumn, at the beginning of a new 
business year. 

" This year," they say, " I am going to 
master one new subject. I am going to 
pursue such and such studies, which will 
increase my ability and earning power." 

The bigger they are, the longer they 
keep themselves in school. Gladstone 
took up a new language after he had 
passed seventy. 

Have you left school? 

As a matter of fact, did you grow men- 
tally last year at all? What definite sub- 
ject are you planning to devote your eve- 
nings to this year? 

11 As a rule," said Disraeli, " the most 
successful man in life is the man who has 
the most information." 

How much will you increase your stock 
of useful information in the next business 
year? 



XXIII 



<< 



A MAN ASKS, " WHAT IS YOUR 
FAVORITE BOOK? " 

OF course, no man wants the same 
book for every mood, any more 
than he wants the same food for every 
meal or the same medicine for every 
disease. 

But the book to which I come back 
again and again was written several hun- 
dred years ago. 

It is called Ecclesiastes: you will find 
it about the middle of the Bible. Fred- 
erick the Great called it the " Book of 
Kings," and said every monarch should re- 
read it constantly. 

He should have said every man; for 

every man is the monarch of his own life. 

And this is the book of life, written by a 

king who had everything that life can give. 

94 



What Is Your Favorite Book? 95 

It is the answer to the eternal question: 
" What's the use?" 

What profit hath a man of all his labor 

Which he taketh under the sun ? 

One generation passeth away, 

And another generation cometh: 

But the earth abideth for ever. • . . 

All the rivers run into the sea; 

Yet the sea is not full ; 

Unto the place from whence the rivers come, 

Thither they return again. . . . 

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, 

Nor the ear filled with hearing. 

The thing that hath been, 

It is that which shall be ; 

And that which is done 

Is that which shall be done: 

And there is no new thing under the sun. 

In other words, life is not just one thing 
after another. It is the same thing again 
and again. Get up, worry and work; eat, 
lie down, sleep. What 's the use of it all? 

The man who is never tempted to ask 
that question has no imagination. 

Solomon, the writer, determined to find 
out what is worth while in life. 



96 More Power to You 

Is wisdom the thing greatly to be de- 
sired? He made himself the wisest man 
in the world, and discovered — what? 

In much wisdom is much grief: 
And he that increaseth knowledge 
Increaseth sorrow. 

From wisdom he turned to mirth, only 
to find, as an end of living, that " this also 
is vanity." 

He sought to give his heart unto wine, 
and " to lay hold on folly": and in this 
too there was no satisfaction. 

Perhaps, then, he said to himself, per- 
haps work is the one thing worth while. 
To achieve something great — to leave a 
monument for posterity to wonder at. 

I made me great works; I builded me houses; 
I planted me vineyards: . . . 

Then I looked on all the works that my hands 
had wrought, and on the labor that I had 
labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and 
vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
the sun. 

Wisdom, mirth, work, fame — 



What Is Your Favorite Book? 97 

The man who has not at some time 
sought each one as a solution of the puzzle 
of life has in him no spirit of adventure. 

But none of them satisfied Solomon. 

What, then, is the answer to the riddle ? 
What will satisfy the soul of man ? What 
will make his life seem to have been worth 
while when he comes to give it up? 

The answer is in the great last chapter, 
which begins : 

Remember now thy Creator 
In the days of thy youth, 
While the evil days come not, 
Nor the years draw nigh, 
When thou shalt say, 
I have no pleasure in them. 

To live straight and simply; to do a 
little kindness as one moves along; to love 
useful work; to raise a worthy family; 
and to leave the world a little better 
than you found it — to do one's daily 
duty in simple reverence — this is the final 
answer. 

And the man who, having passed 
through his periods of questioning, and 



98 More Power to You 

made his false excursions into the varied 
by-paths, does not come finally to this 
true road, has failed to find real great- 
ness. 



XXIV 

THIS HOARY-HEADED FALSEHOOD HAS 
LIVED LONG ENOUGH 

THERE are a few hoary-headed 
falsehoods that have lived too long. 

One of them is this : 

" Ninety-five per cent, of the men who 
go into business in this country fail." 

I have heard speakers get that off at 
dinners with ponderous gravity: I have 
seen it again and again in magazine 
articles. 

Recently a statistician has examined the 
records of business success and failure in 
this country, and has proved conclusively 
that the statement is not true. 

Ninety-five per cent, of the men who en- 
ter business do not fail; and, of those who 
do fail, a good many start over again, pay 
up their debts, and die successful. 

We have fallen into the habit of talking 
99 



106 More Power to You 

about success as if it were something ex- 
ceptional. 

In America success is not the exception 
— it is the rule. 

I am continually amazed by the 
mediocre men — men of one idea, men 
who bore you to death if you have to talk 
with them half an hour — who win out. 

Five years ago a group of us used to 
wag our heads sadly about the fate of 
poor Horton. He was buried alive in a 
great corporation. To be sure, we did not 
think he deserved much of the world: he 
had no genius, only a dogged sort of 
loyalty. 

The other day I received an engraved 
notice that Horton had been made general 
manager of his concern. 

I picked up the latest copy of a trade 
paper yesterday. On the cover was the 
name of a poor stick I used to know. 

We wondered, when he married, how 
he could ever find a job that would pay 
him enough to support a wife. 

That was six or seven years ago. Yes- 
terday in this trade paper I found a full- 



A Hoary-Headed Falsehood lot 

length picture of him, seated in his 
mahogany-trimmed office. He has been 
made his company's president. 

We need to get two things firmly in 
mind about American business. 

First: In a country growing as fast as 
this, the earning power of money is very 
great. Your banker will point out to you 
that if, at twenty-one, you begin saving 
money regularly, systematically, you will 
at fifty have as large an income from your 
savings as you now have from your salary. 

In other words, any man in America 
who will set himself doggedly at it can 
acquire a competence. 

And second: Business in America is 
expanding so fast that any man who will 
take the trouble to equip himself, and who 
will work determinedly, can win a fair 
measure of success. 

Luck? you ask. Yes. 

11 1 believe there are lucky men," said 
Charles M. Schwab. " I have made it a 
rule of my life to surround myself with 
lucky men : to have no other kind in posi- 
tions of importance that I control." 



102 More Power to You 

But when you come to ask Charles M. 
Schwab what he means by luck, you will 
discover from his own career that he 
means, first, hard work; second, an un- 
shakable conviction that he deserves to be 
lucky and is going to be lucky. 

Many men have the work without the 
conviction. 

Get that conviction to-day. 

Get it firmly implanted in your mind 
that in this country a majority of the men 
your age, who have less brains than you, 
are going to be successful men at fifty. 

If you believe that you are going to be 
one of that majority, if you save money 
and work, you will win. 

Don't tell me that you won't. 

I have never met you ; but I have met a 
good many self-made rich men. And, 
without knowing you at all, I tell you con- 
fidently that you have more brains than 
some of them have. 






XXV 

IN APPRECIATION OF MOTHERS 

A LADY asks me whether I am in favor 
of woman suffrage. 

My answer is that I am in favor of 
mothers. 

Having been a voter for a number of 
years, and something of a student of poli- 
tics, I am under no illusions about the 
ballot. 

It is a very clumsy weapon. Politics 
accomplishes a minimum of progress with 
a maximum of expense and noise. There 
are many other avenues of influence more 
quiet, more pleasant, and far more 
effective. 

But if the mothers of America believe 
that the ballot will help them to widen 
their influence; if suffrage will extend the 
atmosphere of the home into politics in- 
stead of extending the atmosphere of poli- 
103 



104 More Power to You 

tics into the home; if the ballot will help 
women to make the working conditions of 
girls better, enable them to lead happier, 
bigger lives, and found finer homes — 
then I am for suffrage now and forever. 

It is an interesting thing to remember 
that the whole process of evolution has 
been devoted to one single accomplishment 
— the development of a mother. 

Nature began with the protozoa, the 
simplest form of life : then she made the 
worms: then the mollusks: then the am- 
phibia: then the reptiles: then the birds: 
and last of all, what? 

The mammalia, as science calls them — 
the mothers. 

Having made the mothers, Nature has 
never made anything since. She consid- 
ered her task complete. 

All up through the various stages of 
life she had struggled gradually toward 
motherhood. 

In the lower stages there is no mother- 
hood, because there is no infancy. With 
the ephemeridae the moment of birth is 
also the moment of death: they are born, 



In Appreciation of Mothers 105 

live, and die all in a single instant. Not 
much chance for motherhood there. 

The land-crab marches down from her 
mountain home to the seashore once a 
year, lays her eggs in the sand, and 
marches up again. (There are Femin- 
ists, by the way, who contend that the land- 
crab has the right idea — that mother- 
hood ought to be only an incident in the 
woman's life, as it is in the land-crab's 
life.) 

Even with the higher animals the young 
are dependent on the mother for only a 
few days or weeks or months. They 
come quickly to self-reliance: they are 
ready almost immediately to feed them- 
selves. 

For man alone Nature reserved infancy. 
And infancy created motherhood. 

For years the child is dependent upon its 
mother absolutely. It is weak, helpless, 
unable to feed itself, unable to walk, an 
easy victim to a single hour's neglect. 

Out of its helplessness, unselfishness 
was born into woman's heart; out of its 
pain grew sympathy; out of its long years 



io6 More Power to You 

of weakness came patience and self-sacri- 
ficing devotion. 

Women, bending over the cradles of 
their young, learned these virtues first: 
little by little, they have passed them on to 
men. And the world's progress is meas- 
ured by the slow record of their growth 
in the world — the growth of a patience 
and unselfishness and devotion and love. 

Unless each new generation of women 
gathered these golden virtues all over 
again at the cradles of their young, the 
world would soon forget. 

The weakness of infancy is the source 
of all social progress. " Of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." 

We men in business get to thinking of 
ourselves as important in the scheme of 
things: but we are not. Harriman dies, 
and the trains on his railroads stop for five 
minutes and then rush on again. We men 
can be killed by millions, and the ranks 
close up and move forward. The world 
can not be permanently damaged, so long 
as it has its mothers. 

" What does France need most? " they 



In Appreciation of Mothers 107 

asked Napoleon. " Mothers," was his 
reply. 

" All that I am I owe to my mother," 
Lincoln said a hundred times. 

And what was true of Lincoln is true in 
large degree of every other good man in 
the world. 

Fortunate are those men who know it. 



XXVI 

THE LESSON OF A FAILURE 

DO you want to do some reading that 
will be intensely interesting as well 
as profitable? Read the story of some 
of the great failures of the world. Find 
out what caused them. 

I have recently been reading the story 
of a colossal failure — the defeat of the 
Spanish Armada, as told by the historian 
Froude. 

The Armada was the greatest fleet the 
medieval world had ever seen. It con- 
sisted of 130 ships, and carried more than 
30,000 sailors and soldiers. 

It was fitted out by Philip II of Spain 
to conquer England, and was meant to 
overwhelm all resistance by its size. It 
mounted more than 2,500 guns. 

Yet this magnificent fleet, the mightiest 
in the world, was met by a little fleet un- 
108 




The Lesson of a Failure 109 

der Lord Howard and decisively defeated. 

Why? 

Because the Spanish were not so brave 
as the English? No. Because their guns 
were inferior? Not at all. 

The Spanish Armada failed because its 
commander had no faith in himself. 
Read this letter, which he wrote to the 
King when he was notified of his appoint- 
ment: 

My health is bad [he wrote], and from my 
small experience of the water I know that I am 
always seasick. I have no money which I can 
spare. [As a matter of fact, he was the richest 
nobleman in Spain.] The expedition is on such 
a scale and the object of it is of such high im- 
portance, that the person at the head of it ought 
to understand navigation and sea-fighting, and 
I know nothing of either. I have not one of 
these essential qualifications. I have no acquaint- 
ance among the officers who are to serve under 
me. Were I competent otherwise, I should have 
to act in the dark by the opinion of others, and 
I can not tell to whom I may trust. The 
Adelantado of Castile would do better than I. 
Our Lord would help him, for he is a good 



no More Power to You 

Christian and has fought in naval battles. If 
you send me, depend upon it, I shall have a bad 
account to render of my trust. 

Think of Philip II appointing a man to 
command his fleet who would write a let- 
ter like that! 

How could such a commander expect 
30,000 men to have any faith in him, when 
he had absolutely none in himself? 

Yet the headstrong King did send him; 
and the result was one of the most monu- 
mental disasters of history. 

Men fail for many reasons. 

Some because they overreach them- 
selves — because they have too much self- 
confidence. 

But there is another kind of failure that 
is far worse — the failure of those who, 
as Goethe says, " make no mistakes, be- 
cause they never wish to do anything 
worth doing.'' 

For goodness' sake, make mistakes. 

If you are going to fail at all, let it be 
because you believe too much in yourself. 

That, at least, is a man's way to fail. 



XXVII 

WHEN A BOY KNOWS MORE THAN 
HIS FATHER 

SOMETIMES a boy does know more 
than his father. 

Ours would have been a very different 
history if Abe Lincoln, age sixteen or so, 
had been guided by the wisdom of Thomas 
Lincoln, age thirty-six or so. 

" Now, Abe," we can imagine him say- 
ing, " don't waste time readin' them books. 
Readin' never done me any good, and 
what was good enough for me 's good 
enough for you." 

Lincoln knew more than his father. It 

was a divine disobedience that led him to 

close his ears to the man who had brought 

him into the world, and open his heart to 

the vision that was to help him conquer 

the world. 

in 



112 More Power to You 

Robert Louis Stevenson knew more 
than his father. 

That father would have shackled him to 
engineering. He could not understand 
the obstinacy of the boy who refused to 
apply himself. That obstinacy saved a 
great author from misery as a mediocre 
engineer. It was an obstinacy that en- 
riched the ages. 

Jesus Christ knew more than His 
father. 

" Thy father and I have sought thee 
sorrowing," said His mother to Him. 

And neither His mother nor His father 
could hear the Voice that was calling Him 
away from them, the Voice that was to 
find fathers and mothers and brothers and 
sisters for Him among all those who 
should do His will. 

" Let no man despise thy youth," wrote 
Paul to Timothy. 

The boy who has not some firm convic- 
tions and a willingness to defend them, 
even against the arguments of those older 
than himself, is not likely to amount to 
much, either as a boy or as a man. 



When a Boy Knows More 113 

But they must be convictions, not mere 
prejudices, not selfish impulses or passions. 

I know two men who " knew more " 
than their fathers. 

One boy is the office manager of a large 
manufacturing concern, and his salary is 
$40 a week. 

" Better go on in school," said his 
father to him when he was seventeen 
years old. " Better go to college: better 
get all the education you can while you 
have the chance. You '11 need it after- 
wards." 

But the boy quit school and went to 
work. 

He was promoted from office-boy to 
bookkeeper, from bookkeeper to head 
bookkeeper, from head bookkeeper to 
office manager. 

His path looked golden and long. And 
then suddenly he stopped. 

4 You see that man?" said the presi- 
dent of his concern to me the other day. 
1 There is a man who might have become 
general manager of this business if he 
had had a college education. His salary 



114 More Power to You 

might have been $20,000 a year: instead 
it 's $2,000. He 's reached his limit. 
What a shame that he has n't education 
enough to go on." 

He " knew more " than his father. 
And his boyish obstinacy is costing him 
$18,000 a year. 

" Keep yourself clean, my son," said 
the father of another boy. " You '11 
never regret it. And some day you '11 
thank heaven you did." 

But the boy knew more than his father. 
He knew that every young man who is 
Worth his salt must sow his wild oats. 

So he sowed right merrily. 

I saw him the other day. He came to 
me about getting a job. 

He was pale, and anemic, and his hands 
twitched, and he was forever rolling 
cigarettes. He could not concentrate his 
mind on one subject for even a couple of 
minutes. 

I could not give him a job: no man 
could. God knows what will become of 
him. He would starve if it were not for 
the few dollars he gets from his father — 




When a Boy Knows More 115 

The father who, he thought, knew ever 
so much less than he. 

Youth is the mainspring of the world. 

Its insurgency, its inquisitiveness, its 
eagerness to try the untried and do the im- 
possible, drives the world forward in 
spite of the conservatism of age. 

Fortunate are those of us who recog- 
nize the divine importance of youth's cock- 
sureness and conceit, and yet know how, 
gently and appreciatively, to temper it 
with the riper judgment of added years. 



XXVIII 

BUILDING MATERIALS FOR CASTLES IN 
SPAIN HAVE NOT ADVANCED AT ALL 

I HAVE been reading the story of Cecil 
Rhodes. 
His life was full of adventure : it makes 
excellent reading. 

But the passage that interested me most 
was this: 

Riding to the Matoppos one day at the usual 
four miles an hour, Rhodes had not said a word 
for two hours, when he suddenly remarked: 
" Well, le Sueur, there is one thing I hope for 
you, and that is that while still a young man you 
may never have everything you want. 

" Take myself, for instance : I am not an old 
man, and yet there is nothing I want. I have 
been Prime Minister of the Cape, there is De 
Beers [the diamond mines that Rhodes con- 
trolled] and the railways, and there is a big coun- 
try called after me, and I have more money than 
I can spend. 

116 



Castles in Spain 117 

" You might ask, ' Would n't you like to be 
Prime Minister again?' Well, I answer you 
very fairly — I should take it if it were offered 
to me, but I certainly don't crave for it." 

At twenty-five he was so rich that he 
did not want for any of the things that 
money can buy; at thirty-five he did not 
want anything at all; at forty-nine he 
died. 

I hope I may never be guilty of writing 
anything intended to make poor people 
contented with their lot. 

I would rather be known as one who 
sought to inspire his readers with a divine 
discontent. 

To make men and women discontented 
with bad health, and to show them how, 
by hard work, they can have better 
health. 

To make them discontented with their 
intelligence, and to stimulate them to con- 
tinued study. 

To urge them on to better jobs, better 
homes, more money in the bank. 

But it does no harm, in our striving 



n8 More Power to You 

after these worth-while things, to pause 
once in a while and count our blessings. 

Prominent among my blessings I count 
the joys of anticipation — the delights of 
erecting Castles in Spain. 

" There would be few enterprises of 
great labor or hazard undertaken," says 
Dr. Johnson, " if we did not have the 
power of magnifying the advantages 
which we persuade ourselves to expect 
from them." 

Divine power! Blessed gift of the 
gods ! How largely are they to be pitied 
who have it not. 

Aladdin did not have it. Nero did not 
have it. Anything he wanted he could 
have at the instant when he wanted it. 
And, far from finding joy in life, he 
found insanity and the detestation of 
mankind. 

If you would discover the really happy 
men of history, look for those who have 
striven forward from one achievement to 
another, drawn by the power of their own 
anticipations. 

They have made every day yield a 



Castles in Spain 119 

double pleasure — the joy of the present, 
and the different but no less satisfying joys 
provided by a wise imagination. 

I believe in day-dreams. I am strong 
for Castles in Spain. I have a whole 
group of them myself, and am constantly 
building improvements and making altera- 
tions. 

I do not let my work upon them inter- 
fere with my regular job. Rather, it re- 
inforces the job. My castles are an 
incentive to efficiency: they give added 
reason and purpose to the business of 
being alive. 

I trust that before I am ready to stop 
I may have considerably more money than 
I now have. 

But I trust also that I may never have 
too much money. I should not, for in- 
stance, like to have as much as Mr. Rocke- 
feller. 

Indeed, I feel an almost snobbish sense 
of superiority when I think of Mr. Rocke- 
feller and Cecil Rhodes and Croesus and 
all the others of that ilk. 

For I have everything that they have — ■ 



120 More Power to You 

a roof over my head, and three meals a 
day, and work that I like, and the love of 
good friends. 

And I have something else that they do 
not have and can not know. 

I have wants. 



XXIX 

TOO MANY MEN STILL BELIEVE IN 
PERPETUAL MOTION 

SOME day, go into the Patent Office in 
Washington and look at the applica- 
tions that have been made for patents on 
perpetual-motion machines. 

You will see some very ingenious de- 
vices. 

For instance, a machine to be run by 
the power of gravity — iron balls drop- 
ping down a chute and turning a wheel. 

The inventor of that machine provided 
for everything. He even added a brake 
to stop the machine, in case it should run 
so fast as to become unmanageable. 

He forgot only one thing — that it re- 
quires just as much energy to lift the balls 
up against gravity as they develop by fall- 
ing down. 

121 



122 More Power to You 

In England, between 1617 and 1903, 
more than six hundred separate applica- 
tions for patents were made on perpetual- 
motion machines. 

Every single year brings its inevitable 
crop of new applications. 

They stand — this unending procession 
— as a magnificent monument to the 
unchangeableness of human nature. 

A testimony to man's unquenchable be- 
lief that somehow, somewhere, it is pos- 
sible in this world to get something for 
nothing. 

It is a mistake to gather all these per- 
petual-motion machines together in Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

One of them should be set up at the 
busiest corner of every American city. 
And twelve should be distributed along 
Wall Street, New York. 

Every man who goes downtown to busi- 
ness in the morning should pass a per- 
petual-motion machine and be reminded 
of its lesson. 

There is one great law that runs 
through all life. Many men have discov- 



Perpetual Motion 123 

ered it: Emerson named it the Law of 
Compensation. 

Everywhere that law is operative. In 
physics, action and reaction are equal. 
In electricity, if the north end of a magnet 
attracts, the south end repels. 

If, as Emerson points out, a govern- 
ment is bad, the governor's life becomes 
unsafe. If taxes are too high, they yield 
no revenue; if laws are too severe, juries 
will not convict; if they are too lenient, 
private vengeance steps in and metes out 
justice. 

Compensation — everywhere. 

When I started in business I used to be 
somewhat worried by the good fortune 
of the wicked. I saw men who worked 
one half as hard as I and were paid twice 
as much money. 

I saw other men lift themselves into 
the good graces of the boss on the golden 
wings of golf and funny stories. 

But I have seen the Law of Compensa- 
tion get in too much deadly work ever to 
concern myself any more about anybody 
else's success. 



124 More Power to You 

I have seen good fellows who thought 
they were perfectly secure because they 
called the boss by his first name, be fired 
by the same boss, who called them by their 
first name when he did it. 

And I have seen men grow very rich — 
and I know that there are many ways in 
which the Law of Compensation can work 
when a man has the ambition to become 
very rich. 

It can make him pay in health. It can 
turn his home into a counting-room. It 
can make his children snobs and hypo- 
crites. It can destroy his joy in simple 
things. 

Another gentleman discovered the Law 
of Compensation even before Emerson. 
He stated it in this form: 

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for 
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap. 

There are many seeming exceptions to 
this law; but the longer I live the more 
sure I am that if most of the exceptions 
were analyzed they would be found not to 
be exceptions at all. 



Perpetual Motion 125 

There is no such thing as perpetual mo- 
tion. No man ever for very long gets 
more than he deserves, without paying for 
it something equally as valuable as he gets. 

11 Nothing can work me damage except 
myself," said St. Bernard. " The harm 
that I sustain I carry about in me, and 
never am a real sufferer except by my own 
fault." 

11 And " — he might have added — 
" never a real gainer for very long, except 
by my own hard work." 



XXX 

YOUR OWN LITTLE BED IS YOUR 
BEST M. D. 

ONE reason for many of the world's 
tribulations is simply lack of sleep. 

Men who ought to be firm-nerved and 
resolute are vacillating and irritable, ready 
to believe the worst about one another, 
quick to take offense. 

Troubles that would be laughed away 
by rested men are bungled into bigness 
by sluggish brains. 

The world is too much ruled by tired- 
eyed men. 

Look at the newspaper pictures of Mr. 
Asquith if you would know why England 
did not make more progress in the first 
year of the war. His face looks as if he 
were 7,000 hours behind in his sleep. 

Study any one of the flash-lights taken 
of our prominent men at public banquets. 
126 



Your Best M. D. 127 

It will help you to understand why 
our own government is not more efficient. 

To avoid overeating and alcohol and the ciga- 
rette habit are matters of self-control [says Dr. 
Richard Cabot in the American Magazine^. To 
get the sleep one needs (which means all that one 
can possibly soak into one's system in twenty-four 
hours) often takes courage — the courage to re- 
fuse invitations, to invite ridicule, to seem odd or 
'■ puritanic." I believe that more minor illnesses 
are due to lack of sleep than to any other recog- 
nizable factor. A person catches cold, gets lum- 
bago, is constipated or headache-ridden because 
his vitality is below par, his physical expenditure 
beyond his physical income. Sleep would set him 
square with the world; but to get sleep means 
sacrificing the evening's fun. This he won't do, 
and so he runs in debt, and is chronically edging 
toward a breakdown. 

A few men seem to be able to operate 
indefinitely with very little sleep. Edison 
is one of these. Napoleon seemed to be. 

But Napoleon in his later years showed 
plainly a loss of virility due to accumu- 
lated fatigue. He often dropped asleep 
in the midst of vital matters. 



128 More Power to You 

Gladstone, on the other hand, consid- 
ered regular sleep of first importance, and 
sacrificed everything to it. 

When Perseus, the last king of ancient 
Macedonia, was confined as a prisoner at 
Rome, his guards wished to put him out 
of the way without leaving any marks on 
his person or bringing down the dis- 
pleasure of their superiors upon them. 

They accomplished their purpose by 
making it impossible for the poor prisoner 
to get a single moment's sleep. 

Napoleon sent 30,000 of his trained 
veterans to Haiti at one time to reduce 
the negro population, who were being led 
by the redoubtable Toussaint L'Ouverture. 
A few months later 5,000 of them — all 
that were left — withdrew, bedraggled 
and defeated. 

What had happened to the other 
25,000? Shot? Not many of them. 
Toussaint did not have ammunition enough 
to shoot very many. 

No. He adopted the simpler and more 
effective plan of starving them to death 
for lack of sleep. Night after night, 



Your Best M. D. 129 

when the French lay down to snatch a few 
moments' rest, he would threaten an at- 
tack. All night long a few of his men 
would continue the pretense — and all 
night long the French would toss in sleep- 
lessness. 

They had faced the best men of Europe 
and won: but they could not conquer the 
loss of sleep. 

I have seen an abject coward lie down 
to sleep, and rise up a strong, courageous 
man. I have seen a liar go to bed, and 
awake ready to tell the truth and take the 
consequences. I have seen vigorous, de- 
termined executives step out of the same 
beds where faltering ineffectives lay down 
the night before. 

" Those who are habituated to full and 
regular sleep are those who recover most 
readily from sickness," says Dr. Benjamin 
W. Richardson, and adds: "The obser- 
vation of this truth led Menander to teach 
that sleep is the natural cure of all 
diseases." 

Menander was right. We should have 
fewer doctor bills; fewer deaths of men 



130 More Power to You 

between forty and fifty; fewer quarrels — ■ 
yes, even fewer wars — if the nerves of 
all men were kept toned and sweet by a 
generous measure of sleep. 

In all the world of literature there is 
no finer line than this : 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 






XXXI 

THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF ENCOURAGE- 
MENT IN HISTORY FOR MOST OF US 

A MOTHER writes me a very dis- 
couraged letter. Her boy is good 
and hard-working, but he is very backward 
in school. 

In fact, his teachers have about given 
him up in despair. 

Both the boy's father and his mother 
stood well in their classes: they are fond 
of books and study. They can not un- 
derstand what is the matter with their boy. 

Fortunately, there are two very en- 
couraging things that can be said in reply 
to a letter like this. 

One of them I have just been reading in 
a Life of Kitchener by Harold Begbie : 

Nothing in Herbert Kitchener created passion- 
ate friendships or stirred the admiration of 
131 



132 More Power to You 

smaller men among the cadets. He was remark- 
able for quickness in mathematics, but in every- 
thing else was accounted thick-headed — a slow 
coach, climbing the dull hill of duty, which has 
no dazzle of adventure on the crest. 

He managed to scramble into Woolwich: he 
was not high on the lists; and no one thought 
anything about him. After leaving Woolwich 
he got his commission in the Royal Engineers; 
and still no one thought much about him. 

The boy who was dull and thick-headed 
— whom nobody thought much about — 
grew up to become the idol of an empire. 

Cardinal Wiseman, as a boy, was termed 
" dull and stupid." 

Charles Darwin, who changed the whole 
channel of thought in the scientific world, 
was so lazy and do-less in boyhood that 
his father predicted he would be a disgrace 
to the family. 

Heine, by his own confession, " idled 
away his school days and was horribly 
bored " by the instruction given him. 

Wordsworth was so lazy up to the age 
of seventeen as to be " incapable of con- 
tinued application to prescribed work." 



Encouragement in History 133 

Henry Ward Beecher barely succeeded 
in graduating from Amherst, having stood 
almost at the foot of his class; and James 
Russell Lowell was suspended by Harvard 
11 on account of continued neglect of his 
college duties." 

First of all, to this mother of a " back- 
ward " boy I would say: Have courage. 
He travels in good company. Hundreds 
of those of whom the world is most proud 
have been almost given up in despair by 
their parents in youth. 

Only when the spark of their special in- 
terest was struck have they shown the stuff 
that was in them. 

And the second thing that may be said 
to such a mother is even more encourag- 
ing. 

Dullness is the rule in the world: bril- 
liance is the exception. 

Business and government and law and 
medicine and the church are ruled by 
mediocrities. 

11 1 have talked with great men," said 
Lincoln, " and I do not see how they dif- 
fer from others." 



134 More Power to You 

The truest bit of business philosophy 
ever penned is contained in the story of 
the tortoise and the hare. 

Any one who watches business life care- 
fully for any length of time is continually 
seeing brilliant, unstable men overtaken 
and surpassed by men with half their in- 
herent ability, whose very mental slowness 
has inculcated in them a mastering persist- 
ency. 

The mother of the boy who invariably 
leads his class has reason to be concerned: 
the mother of the dull boy might wish him 
more cleverly endowed, but she need not 
despair if only his slowness to learn fos- 
ters thoroughness. 

" My master whipped me very hard," 
says Dr. Johnson. " Without that, sir, I 
would have done nothing." 

Yet he who as a boy had to be whipped 
to learn, set himself in later life doggedly 
and unrelentingly to a task that raised him 
high above the brilliant men of his time in 
literary prominence, and made him a 
citizen of the ages. 



XXXII 

YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY 

HARRIMAN died twenty years be- 
fore his time. He was a tremen- 
dous worker, but work did not kill him. 

What killed Harriman was thinking in 
bed. 

Thinking in business hours is a construc- 
tive process. Thinking in bed is usually 
worry. 

One reason why every man should read 
history is in order that he may know the 
folly of worry. 

Read the History of Rome by Ferrero, 
especially those chapters following the as- 
sassination of Caesar. See the pitiful 
worry of poor Cicero. 

Should he follow the dictates of his 
conscience and throw in his lot with the 
friends of Caesar, who had shown him so 
much kindness? 

135 



136 More Power to You 

Or should he take what seemed to be 
the safer course, and join with Caesar's 
assassins? 

Day after day he tortured his soul with 
worry. 

How pitifully unimportant all that 
worry seems to us, two thousand years 
afterward. How clearly we can see that 
if Cicero had simply followed his con- 
science he could have spared himself all 
that worry and probably saved both his 
life and his honor. 

A greater man than Cicero lived 
through a far greater period of trial. 
And he did not worry. 

That man was Abraham Lincoln. 

He was depressed, yes; heartsick, yes. 
But worried? No! 

When he was tempted to worry by some 
trial that seemed overwhelming, he would 
say to himself, " This too will pass." 

By which he meant that a thousand such 
trials had visited men in centuries gone 
by, and had passed away. His trial was 
important enough to make him think. 



You Should Not Worry 137 

But no trial could be important enough to 
make him worry. 

A certain business man faced his board 
of directors recently. He had done his 
best — but he had lost them a large sum 
of money. 

One of the directors said to him : 

|f You don't seem to be much worried." 

He replied: 

11 You gentlemen don't pay me any 
money to worry about your business. You 
pay me to do my best according to my 
judgment and conscience. I have done 
that. To worry would not add one penny 
to your balance sheet." 

Learn this lesson from history: In all 
the six thousand years of history, worry 
has accomplished nothing. 

Your worry will accomplish no more. 



XXXIII 

THOUGHTS ON LYING ON MY BACK 
AND READING A SEED CATALOGUE 

IT is snowing outside; the sky is leaden; 
no birds sing. 

The winter wind howls. 

And I have been lying on my back, read- 
ing a seed catalogue, and laughing to my- 
self at poor old winter. 

He is my hereditary enemy. The Eng- 
lish have not watched the reports of Ger- 
many's condition more intently than I have 
marked the various stages of his. 

They are hoping that Germany will give 
in before next autumn. I do not have to 
hope. I know positively that I have win- 
ter beaten. I have even marked down on 
my calendar the date in April when I shall 
celebrate my victory by my annual tri- 
umphal march. 

When that date arrives, I pack my old 
138 




On Reading a Seed Catalogue 139 

corduroy trousers in a suit-case, with the 
two shirts I bought from the United States 
Army store for sixty-five cents each, my 
old curved pipe and a can of the mixture 
that my wife lets me use outdoors but not 
inside the house, and set forth for my lit- 
tle farm in Massachusetts. 

People wonder why I have a farm in the 
rockiest spot in the world, when I might 
have selected one of the fertile counties 
of Massachusetts or Connecticut or New 
York. 

The trouble with these fertile farms is 
that they constantly tempt one to grow 
something useful. One feels conscience- 
stricken not to be trying to make the place 
pay. 

I know that my place can not possibly 
pay. I know that nothing will grow on 
it but pine trees and flowers. I can plant 
all the vacant places to posies without one 
single twinge of conscience. I have a 
magnificent alibi for my inherent laziness. 
Why work, I say to myself, when it 's no 
use? Why try to fight against Nature? 
Why fly in the face of Providence? 



140 More Power to You 

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, 
A little folding of the hands to sleep. 

Slumber and flowers — what more can 
one ask of a farm? 

It is hard for me to understand people 
who have even one foot of land and who 
do not raise any flowers. 

Just as a back yard full of rubbish al- 
ways seems to me to suggest a rubbishy 
soul, and a barren back yard a more or 
less desolate character, so a back yard run- 
ning over with flowers cries out that in 
this house dwell beauty and peace and 
content. 

For myself, I have already planned out 
just where the pansies are to be this sum- 
mer, and the hollyhocks, and the sweet- 
williams, and the nasturtiums, and the 
roses. 

I get right out after breakfast, and by 
nine o'clock the sweat is pouring down 
every degree of my longitude. I rejoice. 
I say to my soul, " Surely, soul, every drop 
of this sweat that rolls out of your system 
lengthens your life." I feel my neck get- 



On Reading a Seed Catalogue 141 

ting sunburned, and I do not care. It is 
as if health were being poured into me 
from the great source of all health, as 
power is poured into a storage battery. 

And Sundays, after church, I take a 
book and lie down in the midst of my flow- 
ers, and look at the marvel of their color- 
ing, and wonder how it is that out of the 
little black seeds I planted could have come 
such yellows and reds and purples and 
greens. 

And people go by and see me stretched 
there, and I hear them tell each other that 
I am a fellow from New York who is sort 
of crazy, and who must have married a 
rich wife, as he never does any work. 

And then I turn over and listen to the 
much more satisfying conversation of the 
flowers, who bend their heads and whis- 
per in my ear : 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; 
they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet 
I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Where- 
fore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 



142 More Power to You 

shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little 
faith? . . . Take therefore no thought for the 
morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for 
the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is 
the evil thereof. 




XXXIV 

ON TAKING MY OLD FISHING-POLE 
OUT OF WINTER STORAGE 

I HAVE examined the high cost of liv- 
ing cloud inside and out, and I have 
been able to discover only this one single 
patch of silver lining: 

Meat prices are so high that the fish 
which I shall catch this summer will have 
some chance of being treated by my family 
with respect. 

No more shall I be met at the door with 
the cruel taunt: "If you expect to eat 
those little things, you will have to clean 
them yourself." Instead I shall be hailed 
as one who, in his slender way, is aiding 
the Allies, and fighting for liberty, by help- 
ing to feed the world. 

Slinking in at the back gate with my 
string of fish is a humiliation that I shall 
never have to endure again. I shall march 
143 



144 More Power to You 

home proudly, as the cave-man used to 
march, bearing the fruits of his prowess 
to his woman and cubs. 

I am told by eminent doctors that since 
1900 there has been a frightful increase 
in the percentage of deaths among middle- 
aged men from diseases of the heart and 
liver and kidneys. 

In the same years I have noted a fright- 
ful increase in golf and other forms of 
violent outdoor exercise. 

I see men of forty and even younger 
rushing off to the links for a game that 
used to be thought safe only for hardened 
survivors of ninety or more. 

I watch them hurl themselves feverishly 
from hole to hole, returning exhausted to 
their club-houses or being driven home in 
limousines, supposing they have done them- 
selves good. 

And I shake my head sadly and fondle 
my fishing-pole. 

No man ever died at forty-five from 
over-exertion at fishing. There is not a 
single recorded case of a man's heart 
being adversely affected by the sight of a 



My Old Fishing-Pole 145 

cork pulled under the surface of a pond. 

If one loves life and would continue 
long in it, let him fish. Fishermen grow 
in wisdom as they grow in years. 

As Izaak Walton hath it: 

I have found it to be a real truth, that the sit- 
ting by the river's side is not only the quietest 
and fittest place for contemplation, but will in- 
vite an angler to it; and this seems to be main- 
tained by the learned Peter Du Moulin, who in 
his discourse of the fulfilling of the Prophecies, 
observes, that when God intended to reveal any 
future events or high notions to his prophets, he 
then carried them either to the deserts or the sea- 
shore, and having so separated them from amidst 
the press of people and business, and the cares of 
the world, he might settle their mind in a quiet 
repose, and there make them fit for revelation. 

No great philosophy, as far as I know, 
has been born on either the bleachers or 
the links : but how many of the ideas that 
have made men truer and nobler have 
come out of long days on the bank, when 
there were no bites! 

Fishing is human life epitomized. 

There is the water, calm, inscrutable, 



146 More Power to You 

impenetrable, — the symbol of fate, — into 
which every man casts his line. 

What lies at the bottom of it for him 
no man may see. The tiny minnow of 
misfortune which nibbles away his bait, 
may be followed the next moment by a 
monstrous catch of good luck, sweeping 
him almost off his feet. 

What happened yesterday in this very 
spot is no augury of what may take place 
to-day. Always there is the hope that the 
next fling of the line will bring the reward: 
always the lure of the one more try. 

And as one grows older in fishing, even 
as one grows older in living, there comes 
the same consoling truth — that one need 
not catch big fish in order to be happy: 
that the spirit of the fishing is more im- 
portant than the size of the catch: that 
he who fishes well must fish with a calm 
and tranquil soul, drawing his reward 
from the joy of his fishing rather than 
from the weight of his fish. 

To one who can tune his soul to it, there 
is consolation in fishing, and healing and 
peace. 



My Old Fishing-Pole 147 

After their Great Friend had gone, the 
disciples of Jesus were desolate. Where 
should they turn? What could they do? 

And Simon Peter, seeking comfort, an- 
swered: " I go a-fishing." 

Every true fisherman in the world 
knows exactly how he felt. 



XXXV 

IT *S A GOOD OLD WORLD IF YOU 
KNOW HOW TO BREATHE 

IONCE had the misfortune to know a 
pessimist. There was some excuse 
for his pessimism. He was a narrow- 
chested chap threatened with tuberculosis. 

He had given himself up for lost. 

But one night somebody induced him to 
go to a singing school. 

I saw him a year later. His chest was 
filled out; there was a sparkle in his eye; 
his laugh could be heard a city block away. 
He was a resurrected and transformed 
man. 

What had happened to him? The sim- 
plest thing in the world. 

He had simply learned how to breathe. 

The average man or woman goes 
through life with one third of his or her 
lung capacity totally unused. 
148 






How to Breathe 149 

That is why, when you run, you get a 
11 stitch in your side." The stitch is 
caused by the unfolding of some of the 
lung tissue that you ought to use but do 
not. 

Even when you practise deep breathing 
exercises you probably do not fill your en- 
tire lung capacity. At least, so Dr„ Wil- 
liam Lee Howard says in his interesting 
book, " Breathe and Be Well." 

You expand your chest: but the really 
important part of your breathing is done 
with your diaphragm — a big flat muscle 
that forms the floor of your chest. 

And the abdominal muscles are the boys 
you need to train if you are to get the most 
out of your diaphragm. 

Fill your lungs until you feel your stom- 
ach muscles pressing hard against your 
belt. 

That means that your diaphragm has 
straightened down and is massaging the 
top of your stomach and intestines — 
helping along with the process of elimina- 
tion. 

When you breathe out, do it forcibly, 



150 More Power to You 

with the stomach muscles: like a horse 
snorting — but without the snort 

Your stomach and intestines will be 
forced up against the diaphragm again and 
given another massage. 

Breathing in is important, but breath- 
ing out is much more important. 

A majority of the ills to which modern 
man is victim originate* in the intes- 
tines. 

And the chief of them — auto-intoxica- 
tion, constipation — would disappear if 
the stomach muscles got the exercise they 
ought to get through deep, forcible breath- 
ing. 

Doctors have long known that massage 
of the abdomen actually increases the num- 
ber of red corpuscles. 

Formerly it was thought that the mas- 
sage simply located and chased into cir- 
culation a lot of red corpuscles that were 
lying around in blind alleys. 

That is part of the explanation: here is 
the other part. 

There is secreted in the suprarenal 
glands, as Dr. Howard explains, a sub- 



How to Breathe 151 

stance called epinephrin, a very powerful 
stimulant to the red corpuscles. 

" Massage of the abdomen drives the 
epinephrin into action, which forces the 
blood-cells to take up oxygen — if by 
proper breathing you are furnishing the 
oxygen! 7 

Read sometime a book by a man like 
Thoreau, or John Burroughs, or Stewart 
Edward White — one of the great open- 
air writers. 

Then, while the impression of its rich, 
bounding optimism is still strong upon 
you, pick up a book written by one of the 
Russian novelists, or by one of our mod- 
ern long-haired writers who believe that 
realism necessarily means murder and 
drunkenness and prostitution. 

What a difference! And what makes 
the difference? 

The realist will tell you that it is be- 
cause he thinks deeply, while the optimistic 
writer thinks superficially. 

As a matter of fact, the difference is not 
in the brains of the two men, but in their 
livers. 



152 More Power to You 

It is not the depth of their thinking so 
much as the depth of their lungs. 

The corpuscles of the one are red and 
fed with oxygen: the corpuscles of the 
other are pale and fed with cigarette smoke 
and germs. 

" For what, after all, is Life? " asks an 
old Sanskrit quotation. And answers : 

" Life is the interval between one breath 
and another — he who only half breathes 
only half lives.' ' 



XXXVI 

WM. HOHENZOLLERN, LOCK BOX I, 
BERLIN 

DEAR WlLHELM: 
On the day I write this the Presi- 
dent is about to ask Congress to vote that 
you and my folks are at war. 

I see by the papers that some of your 
employees do not take this very seriously. 
So I think I ought to write you, and tell 
you exactly what it means. 

It means — I say it without rancor, Wil- 
helm, and purely as a matter of giving you 
the customary notice — it means that your 
services as King will no longer be required. 

So far as we are concerned, you might 
as well begin right now to clean out your 
desk. When our government writes to 
Berlin next time, the envelop may go to 
the same address, but it will bear a differ- 
ent name. 

i53 



154 More Power to You 

We have come to this conclusion sol- 
emnly, Wilhelm. No nation ever went 
into war with so little flag-waving and 
cheering. 

We are not fighting for revenge, nor for 
territory, nor to win a " place in the sun." 
We are going to war to win peace for the 
world — for this generation and nil gen- 
erations to come. 

We have made up our minds, very so- 
berly, that permanent peace must rest on 
certain fixed foundations. That is the 
reason we can not make a permanent peace 
with you, Wilhelm. 

For the first of these foundations is 
Truth. 

I am not going to chide you with the 
" scrap of paper" incident: nor remind 
you of all the shifty, halting explanations 
you made when our boats were sunk. 
Zimmermann's last effort is enough to re- 
member. 

On the very day when he was telling 
us how friendly you are to us, he was 
promising to help Mexico take our 



To Wilhelm Hohenzollern 155 

Southwest away and Japan our Pacific 
Coast. 

Your people we are willing to trust, Wil- 
helm; but we have had enough of your 
employees. The new world peace must be 
written on a whole sheet of paper, not a 
scrap. 

And the second foundation of the new 
world peace, Wilhelm, is Democracy. 

Kings may have been all right for the 
little one-cylinder States of the Middle 
Ages. But there will never be a succes- 
sion of men strong enough and wise 
enough to drive the big twin-six modern 
State. 

You may point to your splendid ances- 
tor, Frederick the Great; and I admit his 
ability. But who came after him, Wil- 
helm? Do you remember? Frederick 
William the Fat! 

Charlemagne was pretty successful at 
kinging: but a few years after Charle- 
magne whom do we see? Charles the 
Simple! 

Even granting that you have governed 



156 More Power to You 

your people more wisely than they could 
govern themselves — look at your oldest 
boy, Wilhelm. And, honestly, just be- 
tween ourselves, has n't the king business 
pretty well run out? 

As long as Russia was ruled by a Czar, 
I did not mind you so much. There 
seemed no real hope for universal peace, 
anyhow. 

But the world is going democratic, Wil- 
helm : and universal peace seems, at last, to 
be within the range of possibility. For if 
history teaches any lesson at all, it is this 
— that it is tremendously difficult to get 
democracies into war. 

When the smoke of war has cleared 
away, and you are farming quietly some- 
where, Wilhelm, you will begin to see 
things more clearly. 

You will begin to understand that what 
is to blame for the loss of your job is, after 
all, nothing less than the Christian religion 
itself. 

Nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ 
went about telling men that they were 
children of God. 



To Wilhelm Hohenzollern 157 

If that is true, — if all men are children 
of God, — then all men are the equals of 
their kings. 

And now, after nineteen hundred years, 
Wilhelm, all men are about to find that 
great truth out. 



XXXVII 

GENERALLY SPEAKING, A JOB IS GOOD 

IN PROPORTION TO THE AMOUNT OF 

STUDY REQUIRED TO MASTER IT 

YESTERDAY morning, when I rode 
up in the elevator, the starter was 
breaking in a new elevator-boy. 

At noon, when I went out to lunch, the 
new boy was running the car alone. He 
had on a uniform, and was starting and 
stopping with the confidence of a veteran. 

From apprentice to professional in a 
couple of hours. 

Last week I saw a veteran motorman 
teaching his work to a youngster. On 
Tuesday and Wednesday the two were on 
the front platform together: on Thurs- 
day the new man was operating the car 
alone. 

It is a sight I have seen very often: yet 
I never see it without a feeling of wonder. 
158 



Price of a Good Job 159 

What thoughts are in that young fel- 
low's head as he receives his instructions 
from the gray-haired veteran? 

How can he fail to look forward and 
see in the older man a picture of himself 
twenty years from now? 

He is taking up a low paid job — a job 
with no future. Twenty years from now r 
he will be just where he is to-day — only 
older, with a grasp on the job somewhat 
less secure. His experience will count for 
nothing, because it is experience that any 
other man can gain in a couple of days. 

He may, from time to time, force an 
increase in his pay. But the increases will 
not be large. Why? 

Because he learned the job in two days. 
And in any other two days the company 
can find plenty of men zvho will learn 
just as fast and take the job away from 
him. 

Recently I met in a hotel restaurant a 
friend of mine who has just come back 
from England after taking special work in 
surgery under some of the greatest men in 
the world. 



160 More Power to You 

He is thirty-one years old: it is fourteen 
years since he entered college. 

For ten of those fourteen years he has 
been in medical schools, in hospitals, and in 
foreign countries studying. 

Fourteen long years of hard, uninter- 
rupted study. Years made more difficult 
by the necessity for self-support : and filled 
sometimes with questionings, as he has seen 
his college class-mates moving forward to 
their places as well paid physicians, and 
he lingering still in school. 

Yet with what result? 

He has acquired a specialized training 
such as only a few other men in New York 
possess. 

He will begin life with an income of 
several thousands ; he will pay back his edu- 
cational debts in a couple of years; in ten 
years his income will be tens of thousands. 

Fourteen years of his life went into the 
mastery of his profession. But he need 
have no fear of losing what he has gained. 
No other man can displace him, except at 
the cost of fourteen years of work. 

I would not say one word in deprecia- 



Price of a Good Job 161 

tion of honest toil in humble places. The 
routine activities of life must be carried 
on: the world has need of elevator-men 
and motormen. And, according to the 
loyalty and courage with which these do 
their work, they are entitled to the world's 
gratitude and respect. 

My quarrel is not with the elevator-boy 
who can not be anything but an elevator- 
boy: but with the boy who might fill a 
larger place in life if only he were not too 
lazy to try. 

I would see every young man filled, if 
possible, with a divine discontent, which 
would make him unwilling to be less than 
his very best. 

Every young man in the United States 
ought to read the autobiography of Ben- 
jamin Franklin. 

See with what painful diligence he 
taught himself to write good English. 
Watch him, at fourteen, attacking again 
the arithmetic that he had three times 
failed to pass in school, and conquering it. 

See Michelangelo, old and blind, still 
being wheeled into the great galleries, that 



162 More Power to You 

he might with his fingers trace the outlines 
of the statuary — true to his life's motto 
to the very end: Ancora itnpara — " Still 
learning." 

" The gods sell anything to everybody 
at a fair price," said Emerson. 

And when he said it he epitomized the 
philosophy of Business. 

The job that the gods sell for two hours' 
training is worth just what it costs. 

Only that job is worth much which has 
tied to it the price-tag of constant, unceas- 
ing study and work. 



XXXVIII 

THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN'S SOULS 

MOST of us had our little spiritual 
worlds in apple-pie order in July, 
1914. 

We had figured out a comfortable phi- 
losophy for ourselves. 

The world was a good place to live in : 
it was gradually growing better. 

War was a thing of the past. With 
woman suffrage, widows' pensions, mini- 
mum wage laws, direct primaries, national 
prohibition, and all the rest, w r e were al- 
most within sight of the millennium. 

God in His Heaven, all right with the 
world. 

And then, suddenly, out of the clouds 
there burst upon us the most terrible war 
in history, shattering our comfortable phi- 
losophies, rocking our faith. 

We saw school-teachers, lawyers, bank- 
163 



164 More Power to You 

ers, and clergymen marching forth in clean 
new uniforms — cultured, civilized human 
beings. A day or two of war, and presto ! 
mud and blood spattered, they were tear- 
ing at one another like savages. 

I remember once talking to an ex-mis- 
sionary who had worked in Turkey. 

He had come back to this country, re- 
signed from the ministry, and entered busi- 
ness. 

" I should like to go on believing," he 
said; " but how can I, when I have seen 
the helpless Armenians massacred in the 
streets for no crime except that of being 
Christians? How can I continue to be- 
lieve in a God who allows His people to 
perish because they worship Him? M 

B. Fay Mills, the great evangelist, trav- 
eled in his middle years through some of 
the towns where he had held meetings as 
a young man and gained thousands of 
converts. 

His converts had back-slidden : there 
was almost nothing to show that the towns 
had ever been swept by a great religious 
revival. 



Times that Try Men's Souls 165 

Mills, saddened, exclaimed: "If the 
work was of God, why did not God 
preserve it? " And he lost his hold on 
faith. 

Thousands of men have, in the quiet of 
their own hearts, gone through a searching 
process in the past two years. 

Is all civilization, then, a sham? Is all 
our faith in a gradual progress toward bet- 
ter things a mere delusion? Is there no 
God? Or, if there be a God, is He One 
who does not care — who sits idly in His 
Heaven, watching the evil in the world blot 
out the good? 

A hundred years ago the wars of Na- 
poleon tried men's souls as the war with 
Germany is trying them to-day. 

The finest young men of Europe bled to 
death, the wealth of civilization spilled in 
war to feed one man's crazed ambition. 

Why were such things allowed to be? 

In the search for the answer to that 
question, men lost their faith. 

But one man, Baron Stein, did not lose 
faith. It was his influence on Prussia and 
Austria, and later on the unstable Czar, 



166 More Power to You 

that did as much as anything else to com- 
pass the downfall of Napoleon. 

u His whole conduct at this period," 
says Andrew D. White, " and indeed 
throughout all the years of his official life, 
was due, not merely to his hatred of the 
oppressor of his country, but to a deep 
faith that Napoleon's career was a chal- 
lenge to the Almighty , and that it there- 
fore could not continue." 

Against that faith Napoleon fought in 
vain. 

We have passed through trying days: 
we face days even more difficult. 

It is no time to lose faith. It is a time 
to know, as Stein knew, that we fight to 
Win, because there fight against us those 
whose whole career in this war has been 
11 a challenge to the Almighty " — such a 
challenge as never has and never can finally 
prevail. 






XXXIX 

" THEREWITH TO BE CONTENT " 

LAST night I ran across this paragraph 
in the newly published note-books of 
Samuel Butler: 

I imagine that life can give nothing much bet- 
ter or much worse than what I have myself ex- 
perienced. I should say I have proved pretty 
well the extremes of mental pleasure and pain; 
and so I believe, each in his own way, does al- 
most every man. 

That, when you come to think about it, 
is wholly true. Some men have more of 
the luxuries of life than others: but those 
experiences which are richest in pleasure 
are the common heritage of us all. 

Charles M. Schwab, at last reports, had 
more money than I — but just what can he 
buy with it? 

Three meals a day, first of all. They 
will doubtless cost more to serve than my 
167 



168 More Power to You 

three, but if Charlie enjoys them any more 
he is going some. 

A roof over his head. It will be a 
wider and steeper roof than mine, and 
more rain will run off it; but the rain that 
runs off mine will be just as wet, and 
underneath I shall be just as dry. 

A good night's sleep — if he 's lucky. 

He can own more of the world's surface 
than I. But, try as he may, he can not 
breathe up any more of its air; he can 
not absorb any more of its sunshine; he 
can not bribe the ocean to give him any 
more invigorating bath; nor the evening 
stars to shine any brighter over his estate. 

The world is full of pleasant sights and 
sounds and smells, and his ears and nose 
and eyes do not bring him any sensation 
a particle more sweet than mine bring to 
me. 

The world is full of lovely women, and 
each of us can love and marry only one. 

Compared with the blessings we have in 
common, the few paltry blessings which he 
has and I have not are insignificant. 

I have tasted these rich men's blessings. 



"Therewith to be Content" 169 

I have driven an automobile, and sat in 
the front row at the Winter Garden, and 
met Teddy Roosevelt, and worn silk hose, 
and had my finger-nails manicured. And 
none of these luxuries is one, two, three 
with a good night's sleep, or a swim at 
Coney, or corned beef and cabbage when 
one has worked all the morning in a gar- 
den and is really hungry. 
_The habit of contentment is formed, not 
from without, but from within ; and it is a 
wonderfully satisfying habit to own. 

There is no duty we so much underestimate 
[says Stevenson] as the duty of being happy. 
By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon 
the world which remain unknown even to our- 
selves; or, when they are disclosed, surprise no- 
body so much as the benefactor. A happy man 
or woman is a better thing to find than a five- 
pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of 
good will, and their entrance into a room is as 
though another candle had been lighted. 

It is strange that contentment should not 
be more widespread, considering how very 
common and close at hand are the elements 
that go into it. 



170 More Power to You 

Work — first of all. 

Get work, get work — be sure 't is better far 
Than what you work to get. 

Simple tastes — the power of finding 
great satisfaction in little things — is an- 
other ingredient. 

To watch the corn grow or the blossoms set 
[as Ruskin has it] ; to draw hard breath over 
plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, 
to pray: these are the things that make men 
happy. 

I would not have any man slothful: 
there is a difference between the soul that 
does not worry and the soul that merely 
does not care. The man who stands still, 
or slides back, is entitled to no respect. 

But he who is wise enjoys the various 
stages of his progress while he is passing 
through them. St. Paul, for instance, did 
a pretty good-sized job in the world, and 
left a shining record. 

He was forever " pressing forward to 
his goal." Yet it was he also who wrote: 

" For I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therewith to be content." 



XL 

11 THE BUSINESS ... IS UNDRAMATIC " 

1LIKE Mr. Roosevelt, but I am glad he 
is not to be allowed to raise an army. 

He would unquestionably put glamour 
and picturesqueness and glory into the war. 
Glamour and picturesqueness and glory are 
just the qualities that I want to see taken 
away from war. 

" The business in hand," said the Presi- 
dent, in refusing the Roosevelt division, 
" is undramatic" 

Never before has war had that word 
applied to it. 

Always people have entered on war with 
bands playing, and red fire, and fervid 
speeches, and cries of " Remember the 
Maine," or " Fifty-four Forty or Fight," 
or " On to Canada," or " On to Paris." 

They have been thrilled by the spectacle 
of heroes leaping to their nation's call. 
171 



172 More Power to You 

This, so far as possible, is to be a war 
without heroics. Men will not leap to 
arms; they will be assigned to arms. 
Troops will be sent quietly away in the 
night. We shall see nothing of the fabled 
glory of war : only the somberness of war 
— the hard, drab, unpleasant necessity. 

We shall fight efficiently, but it will be 
the fight of men who do a bitter duty with 
solemn hearts. 

And, going into war in this spirit, we 
shall have struck a blow against war. 

It is the reproach of historians [says John 
Richard Green] that they have often turned his- 
tory into a mere record of butchery of men by 
their fellow men. 

If that is true, — if the wars of the na- 
tions have been allowed to overshadow 
everything else in history, — it is because 
men have been taught to believe that war 
is glorious, and the achievements of peace 
prosaic. 

To this war we are assigning men as if 
they were assigned to jury service or to 
mending the State highways. We are re- 



An Undramatic War 173 

during glamour to a minimum. It is a 
business undramatic. 

I have read many of the books that have 
been written in extenuation of war. 

I have read John Ruskin, who says : 

The common notion that peace and the vir- 
tues of civil life flourish together I have found 
to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of 
civil life only flourish together. 

And again : 

All healthy men like fighting and like the sense 
of danger. All brave women like to hear of 
their fighting and of their facing danger. 

And still again: 

No great art ever rose on earth but among a 
nation of soldiers. 

We shall doubtless hear much talk of 
this kind in the months to come : I mean to 
oppose such talk at every opportunity. 

I believe the present war was forced 
upon us; and that, being in it, it is our 
duty to push it, with every ounce of energy 
in us, to a speedy and successful end. 



174 More Power to You 

But that war itself is either beneficial or 
glorious I deny. 

I agree with Seeley that " the Roman 
Empire perished for lack of men." 

Marius and Cinna had slain the aristo- 
crats : Sulla had slain the democrats. And 
when there were none left but cowards and 
slaves to breed sons for Rome, the bar- 
barians overwhelmed and destroyed them. 

I believe that one reason England has 
grown so great is because she has managed 
to avoid serious losses of men in most of 
the wars of the Continent. While Europe 
was bleeding, her people were busy attend- 
ing to their business at home. 

The Civil War yielded an abundant 
crop of heroes, and likewise spread its 
hateful shadow over our public life for a 
quarter of a century. No man could run 
for office unless he wore a uniform: there 
was no argument but the bloody shirt. 

We want no such after-math to this war. 

We shall do our greatest service to 
America and to civilization if we fight, so 
far as possible, without hate. If, while 
bending every energy to winning this war, 



An Undramatic War 175 

we keep alive in our hearts a horror of all 
wars. 

If we do not allow ourselves to forget 
for a single instant that, through the un- 
dramatic business of war, we are fighting 
for the glories and the blessings of univer- 
sal peace. 



XLI 

SOME MEN LOSE FIVE MINUTES EARLY IN 
LIFE AND NEVER FIND IT AFTERWARD 

1LIKE to reach the station a few min- 
utes early in the afternoon, and watch 
the commuters running for the trains. 

I have been watching them now for al- 
most two years, and I know a lot of them 
by sight. 

There are the ladies and old men, in- 
frequent visitors to the city, unused to busi- 
ness, who arrive long before train-time. 

There are the regular business men, who 
arrive one minute ahead. 

And — just as the gate is about to slam 
— there come piling across the station, 
breathless, coat-tails flying, the members of 
the Just a Little Late Club. 

I used to sympathize with them at first, 

supposing them to be unfortunates who had 

missed a car or lost their watches. 
176 



Just a Little Late 177 

But after almost two years of watching 
I know different. 

The membership of the Just a Little 
Late Club does not change appreciably 
from day to day. Night after night it is 
the very same crowd of men who have to 
run the last few blocks for the train. 

Membership in the Just a Little Late 
Club is not a misfortune: it is a habit. 
And one of the most exasperating habits in 
the world. 

Napoleon said : " I beat the Austrians 
because they did not know the value of 
five minutes." 

He beat the Austrians, but he did not 
exterminate them. Thousands of their 
descendants and relatives still wave — still 
with no appreciation of the value of time; 
still a nuisance in the business world. 

There should be some way of marking 
them. They should be compelled to wear 
a button or a distinctive uniform of some 
sort, so that the man who makes an ap- 
pointment with one of them might be pro- 
tected against taking the appointment too 
seriously. 



178 More Power to You 

" Never be on time," said Mark Twain. 
u You waste too much time waiting for the 
other fellow." 

He had in mind the enormous member- 
ship of the Just a Little Late Club. 

I was lunching the other day in a hotel 
with a man who has much more money 
than I have. And a man passed us who 
has much more than both of us together. 

He is a captain of other people's indus- 
try as well as of his own. He began work 
twenty years ago as an office-boy, and to- 
day heads one of the great manufacturing 
concerns of his city. 

" A wonderful fellow," said my friend, 
pointing to him. " Last year I had a long 
series of negotiations with him about the 
formation of a new company. It was 
necessary for us to meet practically every 
day for nearly three months. In all that 
time he was never late but twice, and then 
only for a few minutes. And each time 
he sent word to me from his office telling 
me that he would be late." 

J. P. Morgan figured that every hour of 



Just a Little Late 179 

his time was worth $1,000, and he had no 
patience with men who were late for ap- 
pointments, or who, when they came to see 
him, did not give him his money's worth 
in exchange for the time they took. 

11 It is not necessary for me to live," 
said Pompey, " but it is necessary that I be 
at a certain point at a certain time." 

^And Lord Nelson said: " I owe all my 
success in life to having been a quarter of 
an hour before my time." 

I hold up the record of these famous 
men, in the faint hope that it may do some 
good. 

And yet, the hope is very faint. The 
habit of unpromptness is so very tenacious, 
so difficult to break. 

If I am fortunate enough to be inside 
when the pearly gates are closed on the 
judgment-day, I shall know what to ex- 
pect. 

Five minutes later there will be a terrific 
battering on the gate. St. Peter may be 
surprised, but I shall not be. 

When the gates swing open again, there 



180 More Power to You 

they will be — some of the most lovable 
and exasperating people who ever lived — 
the members of the Just a Little Late Club 
— panting, apologetic, explanatory to the 
last. 



XLII 

THE IMMORTALITY OF INFLUENCE 

I HAVE been reading a wonderfully 
illuminating essay on Bismarck, by 
Andrew D. White. 

And I thought to myself: "It is not 
an army that the Allies are fighting, but an 
idea. It is the Bismarckian conception of 
the right of kings, and the right of might 
in the world, which must be blotted out 
before this war is won." 

Bismarck believed in the divine right of 
kings, when even kings themselves had al- 
most ceased to believe in it. 

King William of Prussia had actually 
signed his abdication, and was preparing 
to flee his throne, because a majority of 
Parliament was against him. 

Bismarck made him ashamed of his 
weakness. What right had Parliament to 
interfere with the government? he de- 
181 



182 More Power to You 

manded. What right had the people to 
question their King? Rule in spite of 
Parliament: defy its majority: send its 
members home. 

So the King stuck to the throne: and 
Bismarck, governing in spite of Parlia- 
ment, made him Emperor of Germany. 

It was he who transformed the German 
people from a discordant, factious mass 
into a compact unit, aggressively demand- 
ing their place in the sun. 

It was he who picked the quarrel with 
Austria, not for any principle, but because 
the boundaries of Germany must be 
rounded out. 

When the yearned-for war with France 
seemed about to dissolve into peace, it was 
he who altered the reading of a telegram, 
and so goaded the French to a declaration. 

It was he who first used the German 
fleet to bully weaker peoples; he who rat- 
tled the sword whenever German interests 
were, everi in the least degree, encroached 
upon. 

Curious mixture that he was of medieval 
ideals and modern efficiency. Deeply re- 



The Immortality of Influence 183 

ligious, and unsparingly brutal. Acknowl- 
edging God, and trampling on the rights 
of his brothers. Believing the Almighty 
on his side, and scrupling at nothing. 
Gentle and considerate in his family life, 
boorish in his public manners; a scholar in 
his library, a glutton at his table. 

It has taken the blood of millions to 
wash out of the world the continuing in- 
fluence of Bismarck. 

I know a certain college fraternity whose 
senior delegation ten years ago had a 
strong man in it who ought to have been its 
leader. Instead of which, he drank, and 
left the fraternity leaderless. 

As a result, a weak group of freshmen 
was chosen that year. 

Three years later, when those freshmen 
were about to become seniors, they, in turn, 
chose a weak group of freshmen. 

For ten years weak delegations followed 
one another in that fraternity, the influence 
of one bad man perpetuating itself long 
after he himself had passed. 

A hundred and fifty years ago there 
lived a man called Martin Kalikak. 



184 More Power to You 

He was a soldier in the Revolutionary 
army. He married a feeble-minded 
woman, and they had a feeble-minded 
daughter. Of their 480 descendants, 143 
were feeble-minded; 36 were illegitimate; 
24 were confirmed alcoholics; 3 were epi- 
leptics; 82 died in infancy; 3 were criminal. 

For more than a hundred and fifty years 
the evil that Martin Kalikak did has — in 
increasing volume — lived after him. 

I know of no more solemn thought than 
this — that no man's influence in the world 
really ends with his life; that the most in- 
consequential acts may reach down, from 
generation to generation, through the ages. 

Of course there is the brighter side. If 
the evil that men do lives after them, so 
does the good. 

If sins live forever, so also do righteous 
acts; if unkindness perpetuates itself, 
smiles, and pleasant words, and the deed 
done in mercy, but soon forgotten, likewise 
are immortal. 

Jefferson's idea that " governments de- 
rive their just powers from the consent of 
the governed," Lincoln's idea of an equal 



The Immortality of Influence 185 

chance for every man, still live in the 
world, side by side with Bismarck's idea. 
The good living with the evil — 
And slowly, little by little, outliving it. 



XLIII 

SOME DAY YOUR EMPLOYER WILL WANT TO 
KNOW WHY YOU DO NOT PLAY MORE 

WHENEVER one is hard up for a 
subject, he can always write dis- 
couragingly about the Fall of Rome. 

He can point out with what awful speed 
America is hastening to the same destruc- 
tion. 

Rome fell because its citizens became too 
soft and craven to defend it. 

America has been full of those who 
cried out that we should be committing a 
crime against civilization if we were pre- 
pared to defend ourselves. 

Rome fell because thrift was swallowed 
up in luxury. 

Of all the nations of the earth, America 
is the least thrifty. 

Rome fell because its citizens ceased 
work and devoted themselves to play. 
186 



Concerning Play 187 

Rome spent millions on her sports: we 
spend hundreds of millions. 

See how perfectly the shoe fits? 

But there are several important dis- 
tinctions to be made. 

One is this : 

The Romans did not play: they watched 
other men play. 

America is still a nation where every- 
body works. It is rapidly becoming a 
nation where everybody also plays. 

And that is a sign of virility : it is whole- 
some. 

Fifty years ago a man felt like apolo- 
gizing to his boss if he played: the time is 
coming when he will have to explain why 
it is he does not play. 

Employers want men who can bring to 
their work more than mere dogged loyalty. 

They want enthusiasm; a fresh point of 
view; a mind that leaps and sparkles. 

Play does more than build sturdy bodies 
— more than cleanse tired minds. 

It builds character ; self-control. 

The school and the office, as Dr. Luther 
Gulick has pointed out, are not democ- 



188 More Power to You 

racies: they are monarchies. You may 
not like the rules, but you must abide by 
them nevertheless. You may want to quit, 
but you can't. 

But play is different. 

You enter it of your own volition: you 
may withdraw when you will. If you 
abide by the rules, it is because you control 
yourself, not because a master controls you. 

If you want to quit in a huff, there is no 
one to prevent it. If you pout under de- 
feat, or become arrogant with victory, you 
are answerable to yourself alone. 

In business you are controlled: in play 
you must be self-controlled. 

" The Battle of Waterloo was won first 
on the English cricket fields." 

Many a man on Monday morning, when 
business would not go as it should, has 
held himself steady and won out because 
on Saturday afternoon, when a little ball 
would not do what it should, he lost 
neither his temper nor his nerve. 

It is possible to overdo play, of course. 

Herbert Spencer was very proud of his 



Concerning Play 189 

game of billiards. One evening he invited 
a strange young man to play. 

The young man beat him three games 
straight. At the end of the third game 
Herbert Spencer put up his cue and said: 
11 Young man, to play a good game of bil- 
liards is the accomplishment of a gentle- 
man: to play too good a game of billiards 
is the sign of a misspent youth." 

But most of us are in no danger of over- 
doing play. 

We are much more likely to go pound- 
ing along, saying to ourselves: " To- 
morrow, when I have accumulated my pile, 
I will retire from business and play." 

And some day they will carve over us: 
u He was going to retire — to-morrow! 9 

Don't wait for to-morrow. Retire 
from business this afternoon at four 
o'clock. 

By to-morrow morning at nine you '11 be 
back at your desk, keen as a fighting cock. 



XLIV 

A LETTER TO A YOUNG MAN WHO WANTS 
A BETTER JOB 

YOU ask me how you can get a better 
job. 

My answer is that you can't. 

All over the country are millions of 
young men who, in a vague sort of way, 
want a better job: and here and there 
among them are the worth-while few who 
want the better job. 

And the millions wonder why the few 
move on, while they stand stationary year 
after year. 

You must, first of all, pick out the better 
job — some particular job that is better 
than yours. Then train your guns on that 
and capture it. 

You tell me that you are a bookkeeper 
and that you earn $ 1 5 a week. 
190 



A Better Job 191 

I know certified public accountants who 
earn $10,000 a year and more. 

If I were a bookkeeper earning $15 a 
week, I should go out for a public account- 
ant's job. I might die on the road, but 
whoever found my body would notice that 
my face was toward the summit. 

Second: You can never make anybody 
pay you more money until you have more 
to sell. 

I can advertise in a newspaper to-mor- 
row morning and have a hundred bright 
young men here at eight o'clock. Each 
one will have just as much to offer me as 
you have: the same two years of high 
school; the same experience in keeping 
books ; the same good record. Every one 
of them will be willing to work for $15, 
and some of them for $12. 

The only way you can lift yourself out 
of that $15 class is by giving yourself an 
equipment that the rest of the fellows in 
that class do not have. In other words, 
by study — by education — by specialized 
training. 

Third: When you have picked out the 



192 More Power to You 

one particular better job that you want, 
when you have fitted yourself for it, then 
be careful of your letter of application. 

If Judge Gary or Charles M. Schwab 
applied for a job by letter to-morrow, they 
would get it in almost any big business in 
this country, even if their applications were 
written in lead pencil on a sheet of butcher 
paper. 

Their personalities and abilities are 
known. Yours are not. Your letter is 
your representative. For heaven's sake, 
if you have in you any spark of originality 
that other men have not, make your letter 
a tiny bit different from the other letters 
that the other men will write. 

Go downtown and pick out a shade of 
paper and a size of envelop that will be 
different. Make your letter stick out 
among the hundred letters that your pros- 
pective employer will receive, so that it 
will be the first letter he opens. When he 
does open it, be sure he finds it typewritten, 
even if you have to spend money you can 
ill afford to spend. 

Fourth: I receive many letters of ap- 



A Better Job 193 

plication. In one form or another, they 
usually say something like this: " I want 
a better job: I am thinking of getting 
married"; or, "I have a mother to sup- 
port " ; or, " I have been three years in this 
place without a raise and see no future." 

All of which interests me not at all. 

For when it comes to spending my em- 
ployer's money I am fundamentally selfish. 

Much as I should like to give jobs to all 
the young men who have mothers to sup- 
port, or who see no future where they are, 
I can not do it. 

The only letter that I read with interest 
is the letter of the young man who has 
studied my business and who points out to 
me how I can make more money for my 
employer by employing him. 

One of the biggest business men I know 
said to me : "I have private secretaries 
to relieve me of many details ; but one de- 
tail I never delegate: 

" / make it a rule to see all applicants 
for positions" 

Why did he have that rule ? 

Because his business, and every business 



194 More Power to You 

in America, is built on youth, enthusiasm, 
and ideas. And any applicant may bring 
him an idea that would be worth thousands 
of dollars. 

Ideas are the keys that unlock big men's 
doors. 

When you have fitted yourself for the 
better job, let your letter of application 
contain an Idea. 



XLV 

IF YOU WERE TO WRITE YOUR OWN EPI- 
TAPH, WHAT COULD YOU HONESTLY SAY? 

IN Ashland, Ohio, a monument was 
erected a little while ago bearing this 
inscription : 

In Memory of 
Ashland County's Pioneers 
Including Johnny Appleseed 

JOHN CHAPMAN 

An Ohio Hero, Patron Saint 

Of American Orchards 

and 

Soldier of Peace. 

Who was John Chapman? 

A simple man like you and me. Born 
in New England, he roamed to Ohio. He 
held no public office; he accumulated no 
fortune. 

But everywhere he went he carried a 
pocketful of apple-seeds. He dropped 
195 



196 More Power to You 

them into the rich Ohio soil, along the 
roadways. At his home he reared one 
apple orchard after another, giving the 
young trees freely to settlers. 

And to-day, in a hundred widely scat- 
tered sections of Ohio, the roads are 
shaded with fruit trees and the children 
eat of the fruit — because Johnny Apple- 
seed once passed that way. 

Have you ever heard the legend of how 
the Mosque of St. Sophia got its name? 

The Emperor Justinian built it. It 
was to be his monument, to bear his name 
forever. 

Every bit of the work was paid for by 
him; every operation he supervised. He 
would not divide the credit for it with any 
other living soul, though there were many 
others who would gladly have contributed. 
It was to be his, and his alone. 

At length, in the incredibly short period 
of five years and ten months, it was 
finished. All was ready for the unveiling 
of the tablet that was to bear the Em- 
peror's name as builder to the end of time. 

The crowds gathered. The Emperor 



Your Own Epitaph 197 

stepped forward and tore away the veil — 
then drew back again, aghast. 

For on the tablet where he had ordered 
his name inscribed was found the name 
Sophia. 

Who was this Sophia? 

The Emperor ordered the city searched. 
Let them discover the culprit whose name 
had displaced his. 

The second day they brought to him a 
poor, cringing washerwoman, who lived in 
a hovel near the wharves. Trembling and 
tearful, she confessed. 

She knew the decree that no one should 
contribute anything to the building of the 
temple but Justinian alone. Nevertheless 
she had wanted to have a little share in 
the rearing of the building to her God. 

Having nothing to give, she had torn 
the straw from her mattress, and held it 
out to the weary horses as they passed, 
drawing their heavy loads of stone to the 
hilltop. 

And the angels, witnessing her gift, had 
erased the name of Justinian and carved 
the name " Sophia " instead. 



198 More Power to You 

I like to think of Johnny Appleseed and 
St. Sophia. I like to believe that there 
never lived a man or a woman so humble 
but that he or she could contribute some- 
thing permanent to the world, if they 
would. 

What could be written over you if you 
were dead to-morrow? 

Could it be said: 

Here lies a man who established a clean 
grocery store and left it as his monument. 

Or: 

Here lies a woman who gave three sons to the 
world, all God-fearing, all with a little better 
start than she had. 

Or would it be written : 

Here lies John Jones, who held a succession 
of jobs, all of which he hated, and who died 
from heart failure while hurrying away from his 
work. 

Will there be some one good thing left 
in the world when you are gone — a cre- 
ation of your love? 

What will it be? 



XL VI 

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH YOU 

OUGHT TO GET, FIND OUT HOW 

MUCH YOU HAVE TO GIVE 

A GREAT word has been added to the 
vocabulary of Business in recent 
years. 

It is being overworked, as all new 
words are. We shall doubtless become 
very tired of it, as we have become tired 
of " psychology " and " efficiency " and 
" merchandising " and other overworked 
words. 

But the idea that the word represents 
has come to stay. 

The word itself is Service. 

I was in the office of the general mana- 
ger of a great corporation recently. The 
business he manages has departments in 
almost every large city. It is a business 
199 



200 More Power to You 

that has unquestionably been of enormous 
benefit to the people of America, and has 
— incidentally — made millions for its 
founder. 

The general manager read me a letter 
from the " Old Man." I obtained per- 
mission to copy four paragraphs. 

Here they are. What do you think of 
them as the confession of faith of a mil- 
lionaire ? 

I can honestly say now that I have never 
worked at the business for profit as the main 
motive. 

My profits have been incidental, though ab- 
solutely necessary. 

I have always conducted my business solely 
for the purpose of what I considered " public 
service." 

Had I conducted my business for the purpose 
of making profit, I might have made as much 
money as I have made, although I doubt it. I 
am sure that I would not have made any more. 
/ am pretty sure that I would not have made 
a quarter as much. 

I know a man who has grown rich by 
building and operating great hotels. 



How Much You Ought to Get 201 

I slept in one of his hotels the other 
night, and in the morning I dropped into 
my pocket a copy of his book of instruc- 
tions to his employees. Here are some 
quotations from that book: 

A hotel has just one thing to sell. 

That one thing is Service. 

The Hotel that sells Poor Service is a Poor 
Hotel. 

The Hotel that sells Good Service is a Good 
Hotel. 

It is the object of this Hotel to sell its guests 
the very best service in the world. 

The Service of a Hotel is not a thing sup- 
plied by any single individual. It is not Special 
Attention to any one guest. 

Hotel Service means the limit of Courteous, 
Efficient Attention from Each Particular Em- 
ployee to Each Particular Guest. 

This is the kind of service the Guest pays for 
when he pays his bill — whether it is for $2 or 
$20 a day. It is the kind of Service he is en- 
titled to, and he need not and should not pay 
any more. 

It is interesting to note how, in the 
course of time, the practical men of the 



202 More Power to You 

world finally come around to the point of 
view of the world's dreamers. 

Napoleon, the practical man, refused to 
see the dreamer Fulton, with his absurd 
claim that he could make a boat run against 
tide and wind. 

But to-day all practical men pay tacit 
tribute to that dreamer. 

For two thousand years practical men 
have looked with a superior sort of tol- 
erance on the teachings of a certain Car- 
penter of Nazareth. What He said was 
very good, of course, but utterly imprac- 
tical. 

Yet the service idea, which is the big 
new idea in modern business, was first dis- 
covered and announced by that Carpenter : 

Whosoever will be great among you, let him 
be your minister; and whosoever will be chief 
among you, let him be your servant. 

It is the one solid, practical rule for 
building a business or a business career. 

If you want to know how far you will 
go in business, take account of stock: find 



How Much You Ought to Get 203 

out how much service you are equipped to 
perform. 

If you want to figure what you are 
likely to get, first figure what you have 
to give. 



XLVII 

DOES YOUR RESPECT FOR FOLKS GROW 
GREATER OR LESS AS YOU GO ALONG? 

I HAVE made no change in the follow- 
ing letter except to erase the writer's 
name. Read it all the way through: 

It is not an easy thing to put into writing 
an experience that lies as close to one's heart as 
this one does to mine. But if its fortunate out- 
come will bring cheer to some other similarly 
situated, I shall be glad that I wrote to you 
about it. 

Two winters ago my doctor broke the news 
to me that I was tubercular. One lung and both 
kidneys were affected. I had to give up my po- 
sition at once and put myself absolutely under 
the doctor's care. 

I was engaged to be married at the time. My 
doctor told me that marriage was out of the 
question. I decided to disregard his advice on 
this point, feeling that I could never give up the 
man I loved. My fiance felt the same way. He 
204 



Your Respect for Folks 205 

wanted more than ever to be my helpmate, and 
urgpd me not to obey the doctor in this one 
matter. 

We consoled ourselves* — a bitter consolation 
— with the thought that perhaps we would never 
have any children. Even if we had, they would 
not necessarily inherit tuberculosis. 

Then, as I lay thinking, there came to me this 
thought: Suppose that I should have a baby 
after all, and that some day that child should be 
told, " You have tuberculosis.' ' Not for any- 
thing in the world would I want a child of mine 
to go through that first terrible agony of despair 
that I had gone through. 

The next day I told my fiance my decision. 
Oh, it was hard, Mr. Barton. We separated. 
We have not seen each other since. I dare not 
trust the strength of my will too far. 

Of course I thought of death, the speedier the 
better. I contemplated every method of suicide, 
from sitting on the third rail to breakfasting on 
bichloride. But with returning spring there 
came the renewed desire for life. 

I followed the doctor's instructions to the let- 
ter — milk and eggs, fresh air and sunshine, and 
absolute rest. By the end of the year my lung 
was entirely cured. The kidneys were better, 
but they could probably never be entirely well. 



206 More Power to You 

Through the efforts of a friend I obtained a 
half-time position in a hospital, which leaves my 
afternoons free for the rest that I still must take. 
So for the present I am self-supporting, obtain 
free medical treatment, and am slowly but surely 
regaining health. 

Best of all, I am cheerful; I am happy in my 
work, which is largely among children. And I 
am full of plans for the future. 

Some day, if God is willing, I am going to 
have a bungalow in the country — a bungalow 
that has a flower garden in front of it and a 
vegetable garden in back. And then I am going 
to adopt a baby. Not a hundred per cent, bet- 
ter baby, but a little tubercular girl, Mr. Barton, 
and give her a fair chance in life, even as has been 
given me. 

The heartache is still there, of course. I sup- 
pose it always will be. But if I had to go 
through it all again, I am not sure that I would 
not choose the same way. 

What feelings are stirred up in you as 
you read that letter? 

Merely a momentary irritation that a 
stranger should waste your time in telling 
you her troubles? 



Your Respect for Folks 207 

Or does it start you to thinking how 
much of patience and fidelity and quiet 
heroism is hidden away under every com- 
monplace life ? 

There is a verse in the Bible that reads : 
" What is man, that thou art mindful of 
him? and the son of man, that thou visitest 
him?" 

Some people read that verse to mean: 
11 What can you see in a poor creature like 
man, that should make you pay any atten- 
tion to him? " 

And others read: " What a wonderful 
thing is man, that even God Himself likes 
to visit and talk to him." 

Which interpretation is yours? 

As you grow older, do you find yourself 
becoming less patient with your fellow 
men and women, more critical of their 
faults, more cynical about their goodness, 
more inclined to see them as only a higher 
form of animal, living a meaningless life, 
dying a cowardly death? 

Or do you marvel more and more at the 
patience with which they bear their bur- 
dens, the unfaltering faith that makes 



208 More Power to You 

them continue to hope for the best, even 
after a life-time of disappointments; the 
unshaken fidelity that fixes their eyes on 
a heaven out of which has issued so little 
pleasure mingled with so much of suffer- 
ing? 

I have sometimes thought that one 
measure of success is a man's increasing 
power to find cause for reverence in the 
lives of his fellow men. 

Judged by that standard, have you 
passed the peak of your success, or are 
you climbing toward it year by year? 



XLVIII 

OF COURSE THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS 

Dear Sir: Do you really think there is 
a Santa Claus? My mother says there is. 
A girl in the seventh grade told me there 
is n't any Santa Claus. Do you really think 
there is any Santa Claus? 

Marion Thayer (age seven). 

DO I think there is a Santa Claus? 
Why, Marion, I know it. 
I have had four times as many Christ- 
mases as you, and every single Christmas 
Santa Claus has remembered me. Do you 
think I would be ungrateful to him now 
by pretending to believe any stories that 
any girl in the seventh grade might tell? 
Of course I have never seen Santa Claus. 
I don't want to see him. It would take 
all the fun away from Christmas if I ever 
did. 

209 



210 More Power to You 

But just because I never saw him — 
what does that signify? 

I never saw electricity. But I can turn 
a button and the light goes on, and I 
know electricity is there, even if I don't 
see it. 

I know that girl in the seventh grade, or 
at least I know her kind. And I don't like 
her, Marion. I advise you to keep away 
from her. 

She will meet you some day, when you 
are engaged to be married. And you will 
tell her that your boy is the most wonder- 
ful boy in the world, and that you know 
you are going to be happy forever and 
ever. 

And she will pull a long face and an- 
swer: " Don't be too sure. You '11 feel 
different after you have been married a 
few years." 

But you won't feel different, Marion. 
It 's only folks that don't believe in Santa 
Claus that feel different. You and I — 
we '11 just go on feeling the same happy 
way as long as we live. 

And some time you '11 meet that girl 



There Is a Santa Claus 211 

who has lost her faith in Santa Claus, and 
you '11 find that a terrible thing has hap- 
pened to her. She has lost her faith in 
women and in men. 

It seems impossible, doesn't it? 

You and I know that women are pure 
and clean and sweet, just like your mother 
— all except witches, of course, and bad 
fairies. 

And men are strong and handsome and 
noble, like your father — all except pirates 
and robbers that live on desert islands. 

We love women and men, you and I, 
because we know how good they are, and 
how kind, in spite of the troubles they 
have. 

But some of the girls who don't believe 
in Santa Claus grow up and don't believe 
in men and women, either. 

And sometimes — sometimes those girls 
grow up and don't even believe in angels 
and in God. 

I don't see how they dare to go to bed 
in the dark. 

Your mother is right, Marion, and 
don't you ever doubt it. And I 'm right. 



212 More Power to You 

And that girl in the seventh grade is 
wrong. 

The best things in your whole life — 
love, and faith, and friendship, and trust, 
and God — are things you never see. 

But they 're the only things worth be- 
lieving in. Life does n't mean very much 
when they begin to disappear. 

You and I won't let them begin to dis- 
appear. Not one of them. Not even 
good old Santa Claus. 

I hang up my stocking every year, 
Marion. All sensible people do. It 's 
only the foolish ones, who say " seeing 's 
believing," that don't. 

And they 're awfully foolish, Marion. 
I would n't give anything for the things I 
can see in life compared with the things 
that I never can see. 



XLIX 

" I DREAD THE END OF THE YEAR " 

DREAD to come to the end of the 



I 



year," said a friend to me recently; 
" it makes me realize I am growing old." 

That suggests a question: When is a 
man old? 

In Shakespeare's time a man was old at 
forty, and often, because of the gay life, 
invalided long before that. 

Sir Walter Scott at fifty-five bemoaned 
the fact that he was an old man. 

Montaigne retired to his castle at 
thirty-eight to spend his declining years in 
peace and study. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson once remarked 
that at thirty-five a man had reached his 
peak, and after that his course must be 
downward. 

Physiologists tell us that in all mam- 
mals except man the period of life is five 
213 



214 More Power to You 

times the period of growth. A dog gets 
its full growth in two years, and lives ten; 
a horse in five years, and lives twenty- 
five. On this basis a man should live 
from one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty years. 

Why were these three men — Scott, 
Montaigne, and Johnson — old while still 
comparatively young? 

The answer is, because they felt old 
and acted old. 

William James, the great psychologist, 
said that most men are " old fogies at 
twenty-five." 

He was right. Most men at twenty- 
five are satisfied with their jobs. They 
have accumulated the little stock of preju- 
dices that they call their " principles," and 
closed their minds to all new ideas: they 
have ceased to grow. 

The minute a man ceases to grow, — no 
matter what his years, — that minute he 
begins to be old. 

On the other hand, the really great man 
never grows old. 

Bismarck, who died at eighty-three, did 



"I Bread the End of the Year" 215 

his greatest work after he was seventy. 

Titian, the celebrated painter, lived to 
be ninety-nine, painting right up to the 
end. 

Goethe passed out at eighty-three, and 
finished his u Faust " only a few years 
earlier; Gladstone took up a new language 
when he was seventy; Commodore Van- 
derbilt increased the mileage of his lines 
from 120 to more than 10,000 between 
his seventieth birthday and his death at 
eighty-three. 

-Laplace, the astronomer, was still at 
work when death caught up with him at 
seventy-eight. He died crying, " What 
we know is nothing : what we do not know 
is immense." 

And there you have the real answer to 
the question, When is a man old? 

Laplace at seventy-eight died young. 
He was still unsatisfied, still growing, still 
sure that he had a lot to learn. 

As long as a man can keep himself in 
that attitude of mind, as long as he can 
look back on every year and say, " I 
grew," he is still young. 



216 More Power to You 

The minute he ceases to grow, the day 
he says to himself, " I know all that I need 
to know " — that day youth stops. He 
may be twenty-five or seventy-five, it makes 
no difference. On that day he begins to 
be old. 



" IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE 
LIVE AGAIN? M 

IT is the age-old question, asked at the 
side of every bier — asked by all the 
Christian world at Easter-time. 

And what can one say in answer to it? 

Every one of us is taught in childhood 
to believe in God and an after life. 

I remember, when I was beginning to 
read and think a little, it occurred to me 
that, though I had been told there is a 
future life, nobody had ever given me any 
proof. 

So industriously I set to work in the 
public library to read the works of the 
greatest men who ever lived and find 
proofs for myself. 

And I remember how, slowly at first, 
then faster and faster, I turned through 
one wise man's book after another. 
217 



218 More Power to You 

" Surely this one will know," I said to my- 
self; " or this one; or this." 

And suddenly the bitter truth flashed 
over me. They did not know, any more 
than I did. All their proofs were not 
proofs at all. In all history there had 
never lived a man wise enough to prove 
immortality. Almost everybody believed: 
nobody really knew. 

It was a discovery that left me helpless 
at first: then slowly out of my helplessness 
I began to evolve a little system of my 
own. 

In the first place, it seems to me easier 
to believe than to disbelieve. 

" The world just happened," say some 
men. " It created itself through the 
operation of natural laws." 

And that sounds very scientific and sat- 
isfactory. 

But who or what established the natural 
laws and set them to operating? 

When you can dump a load of bricks 
on a corner lot, and let me watch them ar- 
range themselves into a house — when 
you can empty a handful of springs and 



"If a Man Die" 219 

wheels and screws on my desk, and let me 
see them gather themselves together into 
a watch — it will be easier for me to be- 
lieve that all these thousands of worlds 
could have been created, balanced, and set 
to moving in their separate orbits, all with- 
out any directing intelligence at all. 

Moreover, if there is no intelligence in 
the universe, then the universe has created 
something greater than itself — for it has 
created you and me. 

Is it easy to believe that a universe with- 
out personality could have created us who 
have personality? 

Is n't it easier to believe that our per- 
sonality is a little part of the great per- 
vading Personality that has created and 
now permeates the universe? 

And if there be a Personality in the uni- 
verse — a God — what kind of a God is 
He? 

He must be at least as good as you or 
I. He could not have made us better 
than Himself. The worse can not create 
the better. 

And if He is a good God, is it reason- 



220 More Power to You 

able to suppose that He would have 
planted in human hearts this unquenchable 
yearning for immortality, and left that 
yearning unsatisfied? 

You and I would not have done so. 

Go where you will, from the most sav- 
age race to the most cultured, you find that 
same instinctive assurance that death is not 
the end. Would a good God plant that 
assurance in his creatures merely to mock 
them? 

Without immortality the world is an 
answerless riddle. We are born; we 
struggle up through slow years of develop- 
ment; and just as we have reached our 
highest point of usefulness — we are cut 
off. 

What inefficiency! What waste! 

It is hard for me to believe in a universe 
that made itself, and that ruthlessly casts 
away its most precious possession - — hu- 
man personality. 

It is easier to believe that back of the 
universe is a guiding Intelligence, of whose 
personality my own is a tiny spark that 
shall not go out while He lives. 



"If a Man Die" 221 

If I can not prove that this is so, neither 
can any one prove to me that it is not so. 

And, until some one can disprove it, I 
find it easier, more helpful, more efficient, 
to believe. 



THE END 



